THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

The House of the Seven Gables.
Showing garden and harbor beyond.

Vbe 9catietnp CIa«»itf(

HAWTHORNE

THE HOUSE OF THE
SEVEN GABLES

EDITED WITH A LIFE OF HAWTHORNE, NOTES, AND
OTHER AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE BOOK

ALLYN AND BACON, INC.

BOSTON ROCKLEIGH, N.J.

ATLANTA BELMONT, CALIF. DALLAS

0r A. MARION MERRIU
1922

PREFACE

Thts edition of Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven
Gables aims to meet a growing convietion among teachers
of English that pupils of Junior High School age and of
the Senior High Scliool Freshman Class are quite mature
enough to read fiction constructi\’ely and with no hissening
of enjoyment.

With a little guidance the pupil delights to find himself
no longer passively considering “ tlie story,” thinking only
of “how it comes out,” and unable to continue reading
with any interest if by some chance his attention is earlier
called to the closing chapter.

Hut now ranged on the side of the author, from behind
the scenes, he discovers the structure of the story, resolves
it into its setting (time and place), watches the intro¬
duction of characters major and minor, and eagerly follows
the incidents which woven together form the plot. He
applies his own little test to each incident “ Can it be omit¬
ted and the story still go on?” separating thus plot in¬
cidents from those which merely embellish the plot. The
characters become to him real men and wo/ricn and he
shares, for the time being, their lives.

The novel, The House of the Seven Gables^ lends itself
readily to such constructive reading: Its setting in a
primitive period of early New England, the touch of
mystery, the little shop with its youthful first customer,
the pathetic figure of Clifford, the quaint gentlewoman

iii

%

PREFACE

iv

Hepzibah, the sunny-hearted Phoebe, the shadow cast by
the stern figure of Judge Pyncheon, the happy outcome
— all charm the young student who seeks to read for the
first time from the point of view of the “builder” and
no longer of the mere observer.

The Notes aim to point the way, to “hold the light”
for the young reader who now walks side by side with
the master-workman, the author, in his journey through
the novel. To such the editor offers this edition, and
bids him “good cheer” and “bon voyage.”

A. M. M.

December 1 , 1922 .

CONTENTS

PAGB

liiST OF Illustrations .vi

List of Characters, as Introduced by the Author . viii
Introduction

Life and Work of Hawthorne.xi

Note on the House of the Seven Gables in Salem . xvi

BiBLiOGRArHY .xviii

Chronological List of Hawthorne’s Works . . xix

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES . . . 1

Notes. 363

Theme Subjects. 378

V

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The House of the Seven Gables .... Frontispiece

FACING PAOn

The Birthplace of Hawthorne ...... xi

Nathaniel Hawthorne in His l*rime.xii

The Old Custom House, Salem.xiii

The Gnmshawc House, Salem.xiv

The House at 14 Mall Street, Salem.xv

The Wayside House, Concord.xvi

Hawthorne’s Grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord xvii
Street View of the House of the Seven Gables ... 1

View Showing Five of the Seven Gables .... 9

The Entrance to the Secret Stairw.ay.16

Where Hawthorne Wrote m the House of the Seven Gablc.s 32
The Attic with Its Bolted, Mortised, and I'enoued Timbers 44

The Front Hallway. . . 60

Pheebe’s Room, Showing Four-posted, Chintz-covered

Canopy over Bed.76

The China Closet in the Reception Room .... 86

The Old Well in the Garden ...... 96

The Dining Room, Showing Bullet with .\ncient Silver . 117

View of the House of the Seven Gables, Showing the

Walks in the Yard ..128

Hawthorne’s Cane, Sandbox, Stenbil, Inkwell, Quill, and
Sheet of Manuscript in the House of the Seven Gables 149

View of the Garden.163

The Reception Room.179

The Dining Room, Showing the Mahogany Family Dinmg

Table . . . ..196

The Nail-studded Door.215

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACINQ

A Comer of the Parlor, Showing an Old Harpsichord and

Tipleaf Tabic.

The Old Fireplace in the Kitchen.

The Fireplace in the Room Used by Hawthorne
Hawthorne’s Desk and His Favorite Leather-covered Chair
in the Living Room of the House of the Seven Gables .
The Old Counting House in the Yard ....
Hawthorne at Thirty-five,* by Henry Inman

• •

Vll

PAoa

236

251

276

302

321

363

LIST OF CHARACTERS

(As Introduced by the Author)

'*The personages of this talc are really of the author's own

making, or at all events, of his own mixing."

Matthew Mavle. "Though an obscure man, was stubborn

in the defence of what he considered his
right.”

Judge Pyncheon. "Was characterized by an iron energy of

purpose. A stern .and relentless man, with
the genuine charac'.er of an inquisitor."

Hepeihah Pyncheon. "A gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden,

in a long-waistcd silk gown, and with a
strange horror of a turban on her head.
Her visage is not even ugly. It is redeemed
from insignificance only by the contrac¬
tion of her eye-brows into a near-sighted
scowl." "But her heart never frowned.”

Clifford Pyncheon. "Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and

worn with troubles that ought never to
have befallen you. You are partly crazy
and partly imbecile: a rum, a failure as
almost everybody is.”

Phcd>e Pyncheon. "She was very pretty: as graceful as a

bird: as pleasarit about the house as a
gleam of sunshine, — whatever she did,
was done jtrithout conscious effort, and
with frequent outbreaks of song. This
natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem
like a bird in a shadowy tree, — it was a
New England trait, — the stem old stuff
of Puritanism with a gold thread in the
web.”

vm

Holgrave, the
dagiLerreotyjrist.

Unde Venner.

Ned Higgins.

LIST OF CHARACTERS iX

"It was a pleasant sight to behold this
young man, with so much faith in himself,
and with so fair an appearance of admira¬
ble powers, so little harmed, too, by the
many tests that had tried his metal."

"Commonly regarded as rather ^deficient
than otherwise, in his wits, he had virtually
pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely
aiming at such success as other men seek,
and by taking only that humble and modest
part in life which belongs to the deficient,
but now in his extreme old age he made
pretensions to no little wisdom, and really
enjoyed the credit of it."

"Hepzibah’s first customer. A square
and sturdy little urchin with checks as
red as an apple. The very emblem of old
Father Time in respect of his all-devour¬
ing appetite for men and things."

The Birthplace of Hawthorne

In this house, 27 Union Street, Salem, on July 4, 1804, Haw¬
thorne was born In 1808 his widowed mother with her childien
removed to a house in the rear of this, facing Herbert Street
The locality is now a tenement district inhabited chiefly by
foreigners.

INTRODUCTION

LIFE AND WORK OF HAWTHORNE

On the Fourtli of July, 1804, in a house still standing in
Union Street in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts,
a boy W’as horn. His work in the world, could it have been
foreseen, might well have justified all the gay display of
bunting and the booming of cannon with which the town
was celebrating the birthday of American Independence.

This boy was Xathaniel Hawthorne. Jlis ancestors
were stern Puritans dating back almost the Plymouth
colony. They w^ere people of influence and achieved an
undesirable reputation for persecuting Quakers and killing
witches. For many generations they were seafaring men.

Tn 1808 Hawthorne’s father died in a foreign port. His
motluT gave up tlie home in Union Street and with her
three children returned to her father’s home, the Manning
House in Herbert Street, where she lived a recluse. Haw¬
thorne’s boyhood pa.ssed somewhat monotonously, broken
by occasional visits to the Maine Woods.

In lOJpearancc lui was a handsome lad, with a thoughtful
face and large dark eyes. He cared little for school, and
made the most of the opportunity which ill-health gave
him f»f remaining at home. At one time, when an injury
to his foot confined him to the hou.se, he was tutored by
Dr. J. E. WWcester of Dictionary fame. He was fond
of reading, Sliakespeare's plays and Pilgrim*s Progress
being his favorite books. He loved poetry; the first book
he bought with his own money was The Faerie QiieenSm

xi

INTRODUCTION

m m

XU

Hawthorne early fancied he might like a literary
life. In a boyish letter to his mother he said, “I do not
want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases, nor a
minister and live by their sins, or a lawyer and live by
their quarrels: so 1 don’t see as there is anything left
for me but to be an author. How would you like,
some day, to see a whole shelf full of books written by
your son, with ‘Hawthorne’s Works’ printed on their
backs?”

Hawthorne was fond of outdoor sports and became skil¬
ful in them. In Maine he spent hours tramping through
the woods, skating by moonlight nn the lake, building
huge camp fires, and sometimes falling asleep beside them.
In Salem he spent mueh time walking about the streets
listening to the stories of old men, laying up a store of
material of the days of witchcraft and of the many tradi¬
tions of the superstition of early days.

In 1820 a wealthy uncle furnished him with a tutor
and in 1821 he entered Bowdoin College. He was not a
diligent student though he attained distinction in Latin
and Composition. Among his classmates were the poet
Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, afterwards President
of the United States. While in college Hawthorne con¬
tributed some short stories to magazines, usually und«T
an assumed name. He had already begun to show that
he was to be a writer.

“ While we were lads together at a country college,” he
once wrote to his friend Horatio Bridge, an officer in the
navy, “gathering blueberries in study hours, under those
tall academic pines; or watching the great logs, as they
tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shoot*
ing pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat fowling

Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Prime.

The Old Custom House, Salem.

Here Hawthorne was employed for a time as Port Surveyor.
While he produced nothing of a literary character during his three
years in the Custom House, he was all the time shaping in his
mind the materials for "The Scarlet Letter” published m 1850.

The building in the picture is more than a century old, having
been erected in 1B18>

INTRODUCTION

' •••
XUl

m the summer twilight; or catching trout in that shadowy
little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward
through the forest, though you and I will never cast a line
in it again, — two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear
to acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the
faculty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for
us, — still it was your prognostic of your friend’s destiny
that he was to be a writer of fiction.”

After his graduation from college Hawthorne returned
to his home in Salem, and for several years devoted him¬
self to the writing of short stories. These were reprinted
later in Twice Told Tales (three series) and Grandfather's
Chair (Parts one, two, and three). These tales had origi¬
nally appeared in The Token, The New England, and other
periodicals. They were published anonymously and
attracted little attention. Hawthorne said of himself,
” I am the obscurest man of letters in America.”

During these early years of writing Haw'thorne’s way of
life rather justified the name of hermit which came to be
applied to him. Of it he said, “For months together I
scarcely held converse outside of my own family, seldom
going out except at twilight, or only to take the nearest
way to the most convenient solitude.” His opinion of
tin; eiTect of tliese dav’s of seclusion upon his work as a
writer is shown in his words, “Living in seclusion till the
fullness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth,
and the freshness of my heart. Perhaps it was the kind
of discipline which my personality demanded, and chance
and my own inclination acting together caused me to do
what was fittest.”

Though while writing Hawthorne loved seclusion, he
realized the danger of it. “ I want to have something to

xiv

INTRODUCTION

do with this material world/’ he said. He held for a short
time a post in the Boston Custom House, through the
kindness of George Bancroft, then Collector of the Port.
Later he was Inspector of Customs at Salem. A change
of administration causing him to lose the office, he entered
upon the socialistic experiment of Brook Farm. His
letters show enthusiasm, for he says he chopped hay with
such “righteous vehemence that he broke the machine
in ten minutes.” After a few months he lost interest in
Brook Farm and left, having decided that “Intellectual
activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily
exercise.”

A vein of genuine liumor is apparent in much of Haw¬
thorne’s work: In The Scarlet Letter he mockingly portrays
his prosaic associates in the Custom House. In The House
of the Seven Gables the Pyncheon hens are made to illustrate
the decayed gentility of the family, while often a touch of
sunshine relieves the deeper lights by the presence of youth
and childhood, as in The House of the Seven Gahles, The
Scarlet Letter, The Dolliver Romance, and Doctor Grim-
shaw*s Secret.

In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody, a
native of Salem and one of his early friends. She was a
sister of the wife of Horace Mann, one of the pioneers of
education in Massachusetts, and of Miss Elizabeth Pea¬
body, the founder of the Kindergarten in Amer^'ca. The
young couple took up theil abode in Concord, Massa¬
chusetts, near the river, and beside tlie now famous battle
ground

“Where once the embattled farmers stood.
And fired* the shot heard round the world.”

The Grimshawe House, Salem

It was here that Hawthorne courted Miss Sophia Amelia Pea¬
body who later became Mrs. Hawthorne. The house stands at 53
Charter Street, adjoining, on its eastern and southern bounds, the
“Burying Point”, the oldest cemetery in Salem. The Charter
Street or Grimshawe House is to-day in practically the same con¬
dition as in the time of Hawthorne’s courtship.

The House at 14 Mall Street, Salem.

Her- Hawthorne prepared "The Snow Image’’ ar^i wrote "The Scarlet Letter.

INTRODUCTION

XV

The house they occupied had been the manse or liome of
the pastor of the church. In the last year of his stay here
Hawtliorne published a collection of his short stories and
sketches, to whicli he gave the title, Mossvs from an Old
Manse, suggesting the antiquity of the stories.

As Hawthorne liiniself tells the storv, “Providence took
me by the hand and led me from a manse to a custom
house.” His appointment as collector in the port of Salem
brought Jiim again to his native city, where he spent three
or four years, during which he wrote that no\el which
establislied his fame, The Scarlet Tidier. From Salem,
Hawthorne nunoved to Lenox, in wcstt'rn JMussachusetts,
where lie Ined for more than a year. Ih-re lie began, in
September, 'The Jlinu'te of the Seem Gables. On the
first of October he wrote to his publisher, Mr. Fields, “T
shan’t Inne the lU'W story ready by No\ ember, for 1 am
never good at ain thing in the literary way till after tlic
first auUimn frost, which has somewhat .such an efi'ect
on my imagination that it do(\s on tlic foliage Iiere about
me, multiplying and brightening its hues.”

In Ih’esident Franklin Pii'rce, a college friend of
Hawthorne, appointe<l him consul of the United States
in Liverpool, England. He remained seven years abroad.
Till' fruit of his lif<* there appeared in Our Old Home and
in The Marble Faini, the scene of which is laid in Italy.

Returning to the United States, Haivthorne again found
a home in (^oneorcl, w'here the remainder of his life was
passed. He died May 19, 1804, and was buried in Sleepy
Hollow Cemetery, where rests the mortal dust ol many
whose names are immortal.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

NOTE ON THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN
GABLES IN SALEM

The ancient mansion which, in the midst of a beautiful
garden, stands facing the blue waters of the harbor at the
foot of Turner Street in Salem, Massachusetts, is the
Mecca of thousands of tourists who throng to it each year.
It could hardly be more interesting if it had been to them,
as Hawthorne says it was to him, “ an object of curiosity
from my boyhood, both as a specimen of tlie best and
stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as the
scene of events more full of intt/est than a gray feudal
castle.” The visitor, viewing the hall and staircase,
“the sitting-room, the parlor of more moderate size,”
Clifford’s room, the great chamber, the secret staircase,
the garden with “Phoebe’s flowers” still blooming, finds
it hard to believe that The House of the Seven Gables of
the novel was not a real house but was built as the au¬
thor said “ of materials long in use for constructing castles
in the air.”

The real history of the house in Turner Street is as fol¬
lows: In 1668 one John Turner purchased the land on
which he built, the following year, a small house of four
rooms. From time to time additions were made as the
family increased, until seven gables were formed. Ti •
grandson of John Turner*sold the house in 1782 to Capt
Samuel Ingersoll, whose wife, a Hawthorne, was the aunt
of Nathaniel Hawthorne. For many years Hawthorne's
cousin. Miss Susie Ingersoll, occupied the house in solitary
ownership. Her young cousin, Nathaniel, • ightcen years
her junior, being almost her only visitor, she told him tales
of the past, and the history of the house. A chair is now

The Wayside House, Concord.

This twenty-acre country residence, situated In the historic town
of Concord, famous for its Revolutionary battleground, was Haw*
theme’s last home. Here, not far from the former residences of
other noted American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Louisa M. Alcott, Hawthorne wrote his “Tanglewood Tales.”

The House at 14 Mall Street, Salem.

Here Hawthorne prepared “The Snow Image ” ard wrote “ The Scarlet Letter.

INTRODUCTION

XV

The hous(‘ they ocnipiecl had been the manse or home of
the pastor of the chureli. In the last year of his stay here
Hawthorne i)iil)lished a collection of his short stories and
sketches, to \\Jnoli he gave the title, A/o.^ses from on Old
Man.n', suggesting the antiquity of tlic stories.

As Hawthorne himself tells the sto^^^', “ Providence took
me by the liaiid and le^l me from a manse to a custom
house.*’ His ai)p(>intment as collector in the port of Salem
brought him again to his native city, when* he spent three
or four years, during w’hieh he wrote tJiat novel which
establislied hi', fame, Tfw Scorlcf Ldtrr From Salem,
Hawthorn" removed to Lenox, in w’ehlc'rn Massachusetts,
wdiere he Ii\('d for more tlian a year. Here he began, in
Septeml)er, ISoO, Thr Ilonar of i/ir >^4'irn (Inhlcs. On the
first of October lie wrote to his publisher, Mr. Fields, “1
shan’t June the lU’W storv rejv<lv b\ November, for I am
never good at aij\thing in the literary way till after the
first aii^^iiiu!! frost, wJiieli lias somewhat siieli an eft'eet
on my iinaginatit>n tliar it df«\s on the foliage here about
me, multiplung and ))rightening its lines.”

In ISo;? President Franklin Pieree, a eollege friend of
Hawtluu’iu', a),pointed him eonsiil of the Ibiited States
in laverjiool, Kngland. He remainetl seven years abroad.
The fruit of his life there appeared in Onr Old Home and
in Thv Mo}hf,' Faun, the seeiie of wdiieh is laid in Italy.

Ueturnirii; to tlie Uiiiced States, Haw'thonie again found
u home in * otieord, where the reriiaindcr of his life w^as
passe<l. JI(* died May 19, 1S64, and was buried in Sleepy
Hollow (’(‘inetery, wdiere rests the mortal oust of many
whose names arc immortal.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

NOTE ON THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN
GABLES IN SALEM

The ancient mansion which, in the midst of a beautiful
garden, stands facing the blue waters of the harbor at the
foot of Turner Street in Salem, Massachusetts, is the
Mecca of thousands of tourists who throng to it each year.
It could hardly be more interesting if it had been to them,
as Hawthorne says it was to him, “ an object of curiosity
from my boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and
stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as the
scene of events more full of interest than a gray feudal
castle.” The visitor, viewing the hall and staircase,
“the sitting-room, the par or of more moderate size,”
Clifford’s room, the great chamber, the secret staircase,
the garden with “Phoebe’s flowers” still blooming, finds
it hard to believe that The House of the Seven Gables of
the novel was not a real house but was built as the au¬
thor said “of materials long in use for constructing castles
in tlie air.”

The real liistory of the house in Turner Street is as fol¬
lows : In 1668 one John Turner purchased the land on
which he built, the following year, a small house of four
rooms. From time to time additions were jnadc as the
family increased, until seven gables were fcTrined. The
grandson of John Turner sold the house in 178L’ to Capt.
Samuel Ingersoll, whose wife, a Hawthoi ne, was tfu aunt
of Nathaniel Hawthorne. For many years Hawthorne’s
cousin. Miss Susie Ingersoll, occupied the hous< in solitary
ownership Her young cousin, Nathaniel, eighteen years
her junior, being almost her only visitor, blio told him tales
of the past, and the history of the hous(, A chair is now

The Wayside House, Concord.

This twenty-acre country residence, situated in the historic town
of Concord, famous for its Revolutionary battleground, was Haw¬
thorne’s last home. Here, not far from the former residences of
other noted American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Louisa M. Alcott, Hawthorne wrote his “Tanglewood Tales.”

Hawthorne’s Grave in Sleepy Hollow Ce ieter^, Cons'^rd.

INTRODUCTION

XVll

shown to visitors as the Hawthorne chair, said to have
been the favorite of the young writer in his many visits.
Small wonder that the house took on a living interest
to him, and that the children of his brain moved through
its rooms as to tlie manor born.

The house has seen many clianges in later years, at one
time being purchased for a Settlement House. Recently
it has been restored to its pristine charm, the secret stair¬
case opened, and furnishings arranged as in the old days.
A visit to it adds a new interest to tlie reading of Thr House
of the Srren Gables, which, though regarded by Hawthorne
himself as inferior to The Scarlet Letter, has ever been far
more a favorite with the reading public.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

George William Curtis .
Julian Hawthorne . . .

Oliver Wendelt. Holmes

Lawrence Hutton . . .

Henry James, Jr ... .

George Parsons Lothrop
Rose Hawthorne Lothrop
Bliss Perry.

G. B. Smith.

Leslie Stephens . . . .

A. Symons.

E. P. Whipple . . . .

G. E. Woodberry . . .

Social and Literary Essays
Nathaniel Hawthorne and
His Wife

Last Days of Hawthorne
{Atlantic Mofithly, July,
1864)

Essays in Literary Criti¬
cism

Hawthorne {English Men
of Letters Series)

A Studv of Hawthorne
Memories of Hawthorne
Centenary of Hawthorne
(in Park Street Papers)
Poets and Novelists
Hours in a library
Studies in Prose and Verse
Character and Character¬
istic Men

Nathaniel Hawthorne
{Araeriean Men of Letters)

XVUl

A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF
HAWTHORNE’S WORKS

Short Stories, Sketches, and Biographies scattered ID
magazines, and later brought into two volumes.

1837. TVdee Told Tales, Volume I
1837. Fanshawc, an unimportant romance
1842. Twice Told Talcs, Volume II
1846. Mosses from an Old Manse

1850. The Scarlet Letter

1851. The Snow Image and other Twice Told Tales

1851. The House of the Seven Ga]>les

1852. The Blithedale Romance

1860. The Marble Faun, or the Romance of Monte Beni
1863. Our Old Home. A series of English sketches
Tile Dolliver Romance. (A serial for the Atlantic Monthly
aufinished at the time of his deatli)

ziz

OUSE OF THE SEVEN CABLES.

View from the street.

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN

GABLES

]

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

Half-avay (loAvn a In -street r)f ono of our New England
towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely
peaked gabies, facing t'uvards various points of the eoin-
pass, and a huge, clusteri-d eliiinne^A in the midst. The
.street is P\ neheon Street; tlie house is (lie old Pyncheon
House; and an elm-tree, of wide eireumferene<-. rooted
before the door, is familiar to ever\ town-born eliild by
the title of the Pvneheon Elm. On inv oceasioiial vis’ts

t ft*

to the town afon'said, 1 seldom failed to turn down Pyn-
clieon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow
of these two antiquities, — tin* great elm-tree and the
weather-beaten edi(ice.

The asp('et of the v'onerable mansion has always alTeoted
me lik(’ a human countenance, bearing the traces not
mendy of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive,
also, of the long lai)st‘ of mortal li^'e, and accompanying
vicissitudes ihat hav'c passed within. Were these to be
worthily rt'^ounted, tliey would form a narrative of no
small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover,
a certain remarkahle unity, w hich might almost seem the
result of artistic arniiigoment But the tory would
include a chain of events extending over tlie better part

1

2 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

of two centuries, and, written out wdth reasonable ampli¬
tude, would fill a bigger folio volume, or a longer series of
duodecimos, than could i)rudently be appropriated to
the annals of all New England during a similar period.
It consequently becomes imperative to make short work
with most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyn-
cheon Houst*, otherwise known as the House of the Seven
Gables, has been the tlieme. With a brief sketch, Hiere-
fore, of tile circumstances amid which tlie foundation of
the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaint
exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent east w'iiid, —
pointing, too, here and there, at some spot of more verdant
mossiness on its roof and walls, — we shall comiiKmce
the real action of our tale at an epoch not ver;^ remote
from the present day. Stil' there will be a connection
■with the long past — a reference to forgotten events and
personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost
or wholly obsolete — which, if adequately translated to
the reader, would serve to illustrate how mucli of old
material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human
life. Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from
tlie little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing
generation is the germ which may and must produce
good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together
with the seed of the merely tetnporary crop, which mortals
term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns t.f a
more enduring growth, which may darkly o'. ershadow
their posterity.

The House of the Seven Gables, antique .as it luw
looks, was not the first habitation erected bj civilizcil
man on precisely the same spot of ground. Pyncheon
Street formerly bore the humbler appellation of Maulc’s

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

3

Liane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil,
before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural
spring of soft and pleasant water — a rare treasure on
the sea-girt peninsula, where the Puritan settlement was
made — had early induced Matthew Maule to build a
hut, shaggy witli thatch, at this point, although some¬
what too remote from what was then the centre of the
village. In the growth of the towm, however, after some
thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel
had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prom¬
inent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible
claims to the proprietorship of this, and a large adjacent
tract of land, on the strength of a grant from the legislature.
C\)lonel Pyncheon, the claimant, as w'e gather from what¬
ever traits of him are preserved, w'as characterized by
an iron energy of purpose. Matthew' Maule, on the other
hand, ■'^hough an obscure man, W'as stubborn in the defence
of what he considered his right; and, for several years,
he succeeded in protecting the acre or two of earth, which,
with his ow n toil, he had hew'n out of the primeval forest,
to be his garden-ground and homestead. No written
record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our
acquaintance with the w'hole subject is derived chiefly
from tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly
unjust, to venture a decisive opinion as to its merits;
although it appears to have been at least a matter of
doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon*s claim were not unduly
stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and
bounds of Matthew Maule. What greatly strengthens
such a suspicion is the fact that this controversy between
two ill-matched antagonists — at a period, moreover,
laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more

4

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

weight than now — remained for years undecided, and
came to a close only with the death of tlic party occupying
the disputed soil. The mode of his death, too, affects the
mind differently, in our day, from what it did a century
and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange
horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage,
and made it seem almost a religious act to drive the plough
over the little area of his habitation, and obliterate his
place and memory from among men.

Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the
crime of vitehcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that
terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other
morals, that the influential classes, and those who take
upon tliemselves to be learlers of the people, arc fully li¬
able to all the passionate en )r that has ever characterized
the maddest mob. ("lergymen, judges, statesmen, — the
wisest, caliiK'st, holiest persons of their day, — stood in
the iniu r cireh* round about the gallows, loudest to applaud
the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably
deceived. If any one part of their proe(*('di]igs can be
said to de.serve less blame than a?iother, it was the singular
indiscrimination with which they persecuted, not merely
the poor and aged, as in former judicial massacres, but
people of all ranks , their own ecpials, brethnm, and wives.
Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not strange
that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, should ha\e
trodden the martyr’s path to the hill of e-veeiui- n almost
unremarked in the throng of his fellow-suff(Ter:i. But,
in after days, when the frenzy of that Jiideou.s epoch had
subsided, it was reinembered how loudly ( olom ’ Pynehc jn
had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from witch¬
craft ; nor did it fail to bi* whispered, that there was an in-

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

5

vidious acrimony in tlie zeal with which he had sought the
condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well known
tliat the victim had recognized the bitterness of personal
enmity in liis persecutor’s conduct towards him, and that
he declared himself hunted to deatli for his spoil. .Vt tlie
moment of execution — with the halter about his neck,
and wliilc Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, grimly gaz¬
ing at the scene — Maule had addressed him from the
scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of which history, as well
as fireside* tradition, has preserved the very words. “ God,”
said the dving man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly
look, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy, —
“God will give him blood to drink!”

After the reputed wizard’s death, his humble home-
st(’ad had fallen an easy spoil into f’olonel Pj'iicheon’s
grasp. When it was understood, however, that tJie
Colonel in(end(*{l to (*rect a family inansion—^ spacious,
ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to
endure for many generations of his ])(»st<'rity — over tlu;
spot first covered bj tin* log-built hm of Mattliew Maule,
there w;ls much shaking of the hearl among the village
gossips. Without absolutely e.xpressing a doubt whether
the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and
integrity throughout the proceedings which have been
sketched, they, iK'vertheless, hinted that he was about to
build his house over an unquiet grave His home would
inchidt* the home of tlie dead an<l buritsi wizard, and would
thus afford th * ghost of tin* latter a kind of privilege to
haunt its new ap.u'tinents, and the chambers into which
future bridegrooms were to lead th(*ir brides, and where
i;hildr(*n of the Pyncheon blood w^orc to be brum. The
terror and ugliness t»f Maule’s crime, and the wretchednes.«

6 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

of his punishment, would darken the freshly plastered
walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old and
melancholy house. Why, then, — while so much of the
soil around him was bestrewn wdth the virgin forest-
leaves, — why should Colonial Pyiichcon prefer a site that
had already been accurst?

But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man
to be turned aside from his well-considered scheme,
either by dread of the wizard’s ghost, or b^’ flimsy sen¬
timentalities of any kind, however six‘cious. Had he been
told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but
he was ready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground.
Endowed with common-sense, as ma.ssive and hard as
blocks of granite, fastened ^ igether by stern rigidity of
purposi', as with iron clamps, he followed out his original
design, probably without so much as imagining an objection
to it. On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness
which a finer sensibility might have taught him, the
Colonel, like most of his breed and generation, was im¬
penetrable. He, therefore, dug his cellar, and laid the
deep foundations of his mansion, on the square of earth
whence Matthew Manic, forty \cars before, had first
swept away the fallen leaves. It was a curious, and, as
some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon
after the workmen began their operations, the spring of
water, above mentioned, entirely lost the dolu iuiisiu ss of
its pristine quality. Whether its sources were dist-i bed
by the depth of the npiv cellar, or whatever subtler ci»use
might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water «/f
Maule’s W’ell, as it continued to be called, grew har<l and
brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman
of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of in-

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

7

testinal mischief to those who quencli their thirst there.

The reader may deem it singular that the head car¬
penter of the new edifice was no other than the son of the
very man from whose dead gripe the property of the
soil harl been wrested. Not improbably he was the best
workman of his time; or, perhaps, the Colonel thought it
expedient, or was impelled by some better feeling, thus
openly to cast roside all animosity against the race of his
fallen antagonist. Nor was it out of keeping with the
general coarseness and matter-of-fact character of the age,
that the son should lie willing to earn an honest penny,
or, rather, a weighty amount of sterling pounds, from the
purse of his ftither’s (leadly enemy. At all events, Thomas
Maule became tin* architect of the House of the Seven
(jables, and performed his duty so faithfully that the tim¬
ber frjiTiiework fastened by his haiuls still holds together.

Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands
in the writer’s recollection, — for it lias been an object of
curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of
the best and stateliest architeeture of a long-past epoch,
and as the scene of events more full of human interest,
perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle, — familiar as
it .'stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more
difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first
caught the sunshine. The impression of its actual state, at
this distance of a hundred and sixty years, darkens inevi¬
tably tlirough die pi(;ture which we would fain give of its ap¬
pearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade
all the town to be his guests. A ceremony of con.,ecration,
festive as well as religious, was now to be performed. A
prayer and a discourse from the Rev. Mr. Higginson, and
the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat of the

8 THE PTOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

community, was to be made acceptable to the grossei sense
by ale, rider, wine, and brandy, in cojjioiis effusion, and,
as some authorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or at
least, by the weight and substance of an ox, in more man¬
ageable joints and sirloins. The eareass of a deer, shot
within twenty miles, had supplied material for the vast
circumference of a pasty. A codfish of sixty pounds,
caught in the bay, liad been dissolved into the rich licpiid of
a chowder. The chimney of the new’ house, in short,
belching fwrth its kitchen-srnoke, impregiuited the whole
air w’ith the scent of meats, fowls, and fishes, sj)icil\ eoii-
eocted with odorifeious herbs, and onions in abiiiKhince.
The mere smell of such I'estivih, nuiking its wny to
evervbody’s nostrils, W'as ui once an imitation and an
appetite.

Maulc’s Tiane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more
decorous to call it, w’as thronged, at the appointed hour,
as with a congregation on its w’ay to cliurcli. All, as
they ajiproaehed, looked upw’ard at the imposing e<lifiee,
which was henei'forth to assume its rank among the hab¬
itations of iiiaiikind. There it rose, a little withdrawn
fiom tlie line of the street, but in pride, not modesty.
Its whole \isible exterior wjis ornamented with (jiiairit

figures, conceived in the grotescpieness of a Gothic fancy,
iind drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, compose!
of lime, pebbles, and bits of glass, with w'hich the wood
work of the walls was overspread On every sid- the

seven gables jiointed ^sharjily towards tin' sk^, and pre¬
sented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifie.'s, breadi-
ing through the spii.ieles of one great ehimney. The
many lattices, with their small, flianioud-shaped
panes, admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber.

The House of the Seven Gables.
This view shows five of the seven gables.

THE OLD PYNCHBON FAMILY

9

while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over
the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a
shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms.
Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting
stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the
seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable,
that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very
morning, and on which the sun was still marking the pas¬
sage of the first bright hour in a history that was not des¬
tined to be all so bright. All around were scattered
shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks;
these, together with the lately turned earth, on which
the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the im¬
pression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that
had yet its place to make among men’s daily interests.

The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth
of a church-door, was in the angle between the two
front gables, and was covered by an open porch, with
benches beneath its shelter. Under this arched door¬
way, scraping their feet on the unworn threshold, now
trod the clergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the dea¬
cons, and whatever of aristocracy there was in town
or county. Thither, too, thronged the plebeian classes
as freely as their betters, and in larger number. Just
within the entrance, however, stood two serving-men,
pointing some of the guests to the neighborhood of the
kitchen, and ushering others into the statelier rooms, —
hospitable alike to all, but still with a scrutinizing re¬
gard to the high or low degree of each. Velvet gar¬
ments, sombre but rich, stiffly plaited ruffs arid bands,
embroidered gloves, venerable beards, the mien and
countenance of authority, made it easy to distinguish

10 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

the gentleman of worship, at that period, from the
tradesman, with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his
leathern jerkin, stealing awe-stricken into the house which
he had perhaps helped to build.

One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened
u hardly concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few of the
more punctilious visitors. The founder of this stately man¬
sion — a gentleman noted for the square and ponderous
court(*sy of his demeanor — ought surely to have stood
in his own hall, and to have offered the first welcome to
so many eminent personages as here presented them¬
selves in honor of his solemn festival. He was as yet
invisible; the most favored of the guests had not beheld
him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyneheon's part
became still mo’’e unaccountable, when the second dig¬
nitary of the province made his appearance, and found
no more ceremonious a reception. The lieutenant-
governor, although his visit was one of the anticipated
glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted
his lady from her side-saddle, and crossed the ("olonel’s
threshold, without other greeting than that of the prin¬
cipal domestic.

This person — a gray-headed man, of quiet and most
respectful deportment — found it necessary to explain
that his master still remained in his study, or private
apartment; on entering which, an hour befoTi^ he had
expressed a wish on no account to be disturbed.

“Do not you see, fcdlow,” said the high-shcriff of tlie
county, taking the servant aside, “that this is no IcliS
a man than the lieutenant-governor? Summon Colonel
Pyncheon at once! I know that he received letters
from England this morning; and, in the perusal and coo-

tre old

pyscukos family

li

siiUration ol tWm, aa Vout may Vave passed away
without his uotVcing it. But lie will be ill-pleased, I

judge, if you suffer him to neglect the courtesy due to
one of our chief rulers, and who may he said to represent
King William, in the absence of the gov^ernor himself.
Call your master instantly !

“Nay, please your worship,’* answered the man, in
much perplexity, but with a backwardness that strik¬
ingly indicated the hard and severe character of Colo¬
nel Pyiicheon’s domestic rule; “my master’s orders
were exceeding strict; and, as your worship knows,
he permits of no discretion in the obedience of tliose
who owe him service. I^et who list open yonder door;

I dare not, though the governor’s own voice should bid
me do it!”

“Pooh, pooh, master high-sheriff!’’ cried the lieu¬
tenant-governor, who hiid overlieard the foregoing dis¬
cussion, and felt himself high enough in station to play
a little with his dignity. “I will take the matter into
my own hands. It is time that the good (/olonel came
forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect
that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine,
in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to
Vwoach in honor of the day ! But since he is so much
behindhand I wdll give him a remembrancer myself !”

Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous
riding-boots as might of itself have been audible in the
remotest of the seven gables, he advanced to the door,
which the servant pointed out, and made its new panels
reecho with a loud, free knock. Then, looking round,
with a smile, to the spectators, he awaited a response.
As none came, how^ever, he knocked again, but with the

12 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

same unsatisfactory result as at first. And now, being
a trifle choleric in his temperament, the lieutenant"
governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith
he so beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of
the by-standers whispered, the racket might have
disturbed the dead. Be that as it might, it seemed
to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon.
When the sound subsided, the silence through the house
was deep, dreary, and oppressive, notwithstanding that
the tongues of many of the guests had already been
loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits.

“Strange, forsooth!—very strange!” cried the lieu¬
tenant-governor, whose smile was changed to a frown.
“But seeing that our host ets us the good example of
forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside,
and make free to intrude on his privacy ! ”

He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and
was flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind tliat
passed, as i^dth a loud sigh, from the outermost portal
through all the passages and apartments of the new
house. It rustled tlie silken garments of the ladies,
and waved the long curls of the gentlemen’s wigs, and
shook the window-hangings and the curtains of the
bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir, which
yet w'as more like a hush. A shadow of awe and half¬
fearful anticipation — no})ody knew wherefore, nor of
what — had all at once fallen over the company.

They thronged, however, to the now open door, piess-
ing the lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their
curiosity, into the room in advance of them. At the
first glimpse they beheld nothing extraordinary: a hand¬
somely furnished room, of moderate size, somewhat

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

13

darkened by curtains; books arranged on shelves; a large
map on the wall, and likewise a portrait of Colonel
Pyncheon, beneath which sat the original Colonel him¬
self, in an oaken elbow-chair, with a pen in his hand.
Letters, parchments, and blank sheets of paper were on
the table before him. He appeared to gaze at the curious
crowd, in front of which stood the lieutenant-governor;
and there was a frown on his dark and massive counte¬
nance, as if sternly resentful of the boldness that had
impelled them into his private retirement.

A little boy — the Colonel’s grandchild, and the only
human being that ever dared to be familiar with him —
now made his way among the guests, and ran towards
the seated figure; then pausing half-way, he ])cgan to
shriek with terror. The company, tremulous as the
leave** of a tree, when all are shaking togctluT, drew
nearer, and perceived that there was an unnatural dis¬
tortion in the fixedness of C’olone*! Pyncheon’s stare;
that there was blood on his ruff, and that liis hoary
beard was saturated with it. It was too late to give
assistance. The iron-hearted Puritan, the rehmtless
persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man, was
dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a tradition,
only wortli alluding to as lending a tinge of supersti¬
tious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it,
that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the tones
of M^hich wcir#^ like those of old Matthew Maulc, the
executed wizard, — “ God hath given him blood to drink !”

Thus early had that one guest, — the only guest who
is certain, at one time or another, to find Ins way into
every human dwelling, — thus early had Death stepped
across the threshold of the House of the Seven Gables !

14 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Colonel Pyncheon’s sudden and mysterious end made
a vast deal of noise in its day. There were many rumors,
some of which have vaguely drifted down to the present
time, how that appearances indicated violence; that
there were the marks of fingers on his throat, and
the print of a bloody hand on his plaited ruff; and
that his peaked beard was dishevelled, as if it had
been fiercely clutched and pulled. It was averred, like¬
wise, that the lattice-window, near the Colonel’s chair,
was open; xrid that only a few minutes before the fatal
occurrence, the figure of a man had been seen clam¬
bering over the garden-fence, in the rear of the house.
Hut it were folly to lay aii> stress on stories of this kind,
which are sure to spring Ujv around such an event as
that now related, and which, as in the present case,
sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards,
like tlu‘ toadstools tliat indicate where tlie fallen and
bmiecl trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into
the earth. For our owm part, we allow them just as
little credence as to that other fable of the skeleton hand
which the lieutenant-governor was said to have seen
at the (^olonel's throat, but which vanished away, as
he advanced farther into the room. Certain it is, how¬
ever, <^hat there was a great consultation and dispute
of doctors over the dead body. One — John Swin-
nerton by name — who appears to liave been a man
of eminence, upheld it, if we have rightly unde»~?tood
his terms of art, to be a ciise of apoplo.y. His profes¬
sional brethren, each for himself, adopted various hy¬
potheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed out
in a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not
show a bewilderment of mind in these erudite phy-

THE OLD PYNCHEON EAMILY

15

flicians, certainly causes it in the unlearned peruser of
their opinions. The coroner’s jury sat upon the corpse,
and, like sensible men, returned an unassailable verdict
of "Sudden Death!”

It is indeed difRcult to imagine that there could have
been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest
grounds for implicating any particular individual as
the perpetrator. The rank, wealth, and eminent char¬
acter of the deceased must have insured the strictest
scrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance. As none
such is on record, it is safe to assume that none ex¬
isted. Tradition, — which sometimes brings down truth
that history has let slip, but is of toner the wild babble
of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside
and now congeals in newspapers, — tradition is respon¬
sible for all contrary averments. In (Colonel Pyncheon’s
funeral sermon, which was printed, and is still extant,
the Rev. Mr. ITigginson enumerates, among the many
felicities of his distingui.shed parishioner’s earthly career,
the happy seasonableiiess of his death. Ilis duties all
pci formed, — the higliest prosperity attained, — his race
and future generatitins fixed on a stable basis, and with
a stately roof to shelter them, for eenturies to come, —
what other upw'ard step remained for this good man to
take, save the final step from earth to the golden gate
of heaven! 'J’he pious clergyman surely would not have
uttered words like these had he in the least suspected
that the Colonel had been thrust into the other world
with the clutch of violence upon his throat.

The family of Colonel Pynchcon, at the *'poch of his
death, seemed flestined to as fortunate a permanence
as can anywise consist with the inherent instability of

16 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

human affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the
progress of time would rather increase and ripen their
prosperity, than wear away and destroy it. For, not
only had his son and heir come into immediate enjoy¬
ment of a rich estate, but there was a claim through an
Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of the
General Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored and
unmeasured tract of Eastern lands. These possessions
— for as such they might almost certainly be reck¬
oned — comprised the greater part of what is now known
as Waldo County, in the State of Maine, and were
more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a reign¬
ing princess territory, on European soil. When the
pathless forest that still co^'ered this wild principality
should give place — as it inevitably must, though per¬
haps not till ages hence — to the golden fertility of hu¬
man culture, it would be the source of incalculable
wealth to the Pyncheon blood. Had the Colonel sur¬
vived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his
great political influence, and powerful connections at
home and abroad, would have consummated all that
was necessary to render the claim available. But, in
spite of good Mr. Higginson’s congratulatory eloquence,
this appeared to be the one thing which Colonel Pyn¬
cheon, provident and sagacious as he was, had allowed
to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective territory
was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His
son lacked not merely the father’s eminent position,
but the talent and force of character to achieve it: he
could, therefore, effect nothing by dint of political in¬
terest ; and the bare justice or legality of the claim was
not so apparent, after the Colonel’s decease, as it had

The Enirange to the Secret Stairway.

This opens out of the dining room. The doorway is narrow
and at first sight looks like an ornamental panel in the white-
painted woodwork.

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

17

been pronounced in his lifetime. Some connecting
link had slipped out of the evidence, and could not any¬
where be found.

Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not
only then, but at various periods for nearly a hun¬
dred years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly
persisted in deeming their right. But, in course of
time, the territory was partly re-granted to more fa¬
vored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by
actual settlers. These last, if thev ever heard of the
Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the idea of any
man’s asserting a right — on the strength of mouldy
parchments, signed with the faded autographs of gov¬
ernors and legislators long dead and forgotten — to
the lands which they or their fathers had wrested from the
wild liand of nature by their own sturdy toil. This
impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing more
solid than to cherish, from generation to generation, an
absurd delusion of family importance, which all along
characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the poorest
member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of
nobility, and might yet come into the possession of
princely wealth to support it. In the better specimens
of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal grace over
the hard material of human life, without stealing away
any truly valuable quality. In the baser sort, its effect
was to increase the liability to sluggishness and depen¬
dence, and induce the victim of a shadowy hope to remit
all self-effort, while awaiting the realization of his dreams.
Years and years after their claim had passed out of the
public memory, the Pyncheons were accustomed to cem-
sult the Colonel’s ancient map, which had been projected

18 THE HOUSE OP THE SE'TEN GABLES

while Waldo County was still an unbroken wilderness.
Where the old land-surveyor had put down woods, lakes,
and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, and
dotted the villages and towns, and calculated the pro¬
gressively increasing value of the territory, as if there
were yet a prospect of its ultimately forming a prince*
dom for themselves.

In almost every generation, nevertheless, there hap¬
pened to be some one descendant of the family gifted
with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practical
energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the orig¬
inal founder. His character, indeed, might be traced
all the way down, as distinctly as if the Colonel him¬
self, a little diluted, had be«*n gifted with a sort of in¬
termittent immortality on earth. At two or three
epochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this
representative of hereditary qualities had made his ap¬
pearance, and caused the traditionary gossips of the
town to whisper among themselves, “Here is the old
Pyncheon come again! Now the Seven Gables will
be new-shingled!” From father to son, they clung to
the ancestral house wdth singular tenacity of home at¬
tachment. For various reasons, however, and from
impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on
paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not
most, of the successive proprietors of this estate were
troubled with doubts as to their moral right to hold it.
Of their legal tenure there could be no question; but
old Matthew Maulc, it is to be feared, trode downward
from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy
footstep, all the way, on the conscience of a Pyncheon.
If so, we are left to dispose of the awful query, whether

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

19

each inheritor of the property — conscious of wrong,
and failing to rectify it — did not commit anew the
great guilt of his ancestor, and incur all its original
responsibilities. And supposing such to be the case,
would it not be a far truer mode of expression to say
of the Pyncheon family, that they inherited a great
misfortune, than the reverse ?

We have already hinted that it is not our purpose
to trace down the history of the Pyncheon family, in
its unbroken connection witli the House of the Seven
Gables; nor to show, as in a magic picture, how the
rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the vener¬
able house itself. As regards its interior life, a large,
dim looking-glass used to hang in one of the rooms,
and was fabled to contain within its depths all the shapes
that had ever been reflected there, — the old Colonel
himself, and his many descendants, some in the garb of
antique babyhood, and others in the bloom of feminine
beauty or manly prime, or saddened with the wrinkles
Df frosty age. Had we the secret of that mirror, we would
gladly sit down before it, and transfer its revelations to
our page. Hut there was a story, for which it is difficult
to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of Matthew
Maule had some connection with the mystery of the look¬
ing-glass, and tliat, by what appears to have been a sort
of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region
all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not as they had
shown tliemselves to the world nor in their better and
happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin,
or in the crisis of life’s bitterest sorrow. The popular
Imagination, indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair
of the old Puritan Pyncheon and the wizard Maule; the

20 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

curse, which the latter flung from his scaffold, was remem¬
bered, with the very important addition, that it had be¬
come a part of the Pyncheon inheritance. If one of the
family did but gurgle in his throat, a bystander would
be likely enough to whisper, between jest and earnest,
"He has Maulers blood to drink!” The sudden death
of a Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago, with circum¬
stances very similar to what have been related of the

If

Colonel’s (‘xit, was held as giving additional probability
to the rece'ved opinion on this topic. It was considered,
moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that
Colonel Pyncheon’s picture — in obedience, it was said,
to a provision of his will — remained affixed to the wall
of the room in which he dicil Those stern, immitigable
features seemed to symbolize an evil influence, and so
darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the
sunshine of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or pur¬
poses could e\'er spring up and blossom there. To the
thoughtful mind there will be no tinge of superstition in
what we figuratively express, by affirming that the ghost
of a dead progenitor — perhaps iis a portion of his own
punishment — is often doomed to become the I0\dl Genms
of his family.

The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better
part of two centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissi¬
tude than has attended most other New England families
during the same period of time. Possessing very dis¬
tinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless took the
general characteristics of the little community in which
they dwelt; a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-
ordered, and home-loving inhabitants, as well as for the
somewhat confined scope of its sympathies; but in whichy

THE OLD PYNCHBON FAMILY

21

be it said, there ore odder individuals, and, now and then,
stranger occurrences, than one meets with almost any¬
where else. During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of
that epoch, adopting the royal side, became a refugee;
but repented, and made his reappearance, just at the
point of time to preserve the House of the Seven Gables
from confiscation. For the last seventy years the most
noted event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise
the heaviest calamity that ever befell the race; no less
than the violent death — for so it was adjudged — of
one member of the family by the criminal act of another.
Certain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence
had brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of
the deceased Pyncheon. The young man was tried and
convicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial
nature of the evidence, and possibly some lurking doubt
in the breast of the executive, or, lastly, — an argument
of greater weight in a republic than it could have been
under a monarchy, — the high respectability and political
influence of the criminal’s connections, had availed to
mitigate his doom from death to perpetual imprisonment.
This sad affair had chanced about thirty years before the
action of our story commences. Latterly, there were
rumors (which few believed, and only one or two felt
greatly interested in) that this long-buried man was likely,
for some reason or other, to be summoned forth from his
living tomb.

It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim
of tliis now almost forgotten murder. He was an old
bachelor, and possessed of great wealth, in addition to
the house and real estate which constituted what remained
of the ancient Pyncheon property. Being of an eccentric

22 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

and melancholy turn of mind, and greatly given to rum¬
maging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he
had brought himself, it is averred, to the conclusion that
Matthew Maule, the wizard, had been foully wronged
out of his homestead, if not out of his life. Such being
the case, and he, the old bachelor, in possession of the
ill-gotten spoil, — with the black stain of blood sunken
deep into it, and still to be scented by conscientious nos¬
trils, — the question occurred, whether it were not im¬
perative upjn him, even at this late hour, to make res¬
titution to Maule's posterity. To a man living so much
in the past, and so little in the present, as the secluded
and antiquarian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed
not so vast a period as to ob\ iate the propriety of substi¬
tuting right for wrong. It was the belief of those who
knew him best, that he would positively have taken the
very singular step of giving up the House of the Seven
Gables to the representative of Matthew Maule, but for
the unspeakable tumult which a suspicion of the old
gentleman’s project awakened among his Pyncheon
relatives. Their exertions had the effect of, suspending
his purpose; but it was feared that he would perform,
after death, by the operation of his last will, what he had
so hardly been prevented from doing in his proper life¬
time. But there is no one thing which men so rarely do,
whatever the provocation or inducement, as to bequeath
patrimonial property away from their own blood. Tliey
may love other indivjduals far better than their rela¬
tives, — they may even cherish dislike, or positive hatred,
to the latter; but yet, in view of death, the strong prej¬
udice of propinquity revives, and impels the testator
to send down his estate in the line marked out by custom

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

23

so immemorial that it looks like nature. In all the Pyn«
cheons, this feeling had the energy of disease. It was too
powerful for the conscientious scruples of the old bachelor;
at whose deaths accordingly, the mansion-house, together
with most of his other riches, passed into the possession
of his next legal representative.

This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young
man who had been convicted of the uncle's murder. The
new heir, up to the period of his accession, was reckoned
rather a dissipated youth, but had at once reformed, and
made himself an exceedingly respectable member of society.
In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, and
had won higher eminence in the world than any of his
race since the time of the original Puritan. Applying
himself in earlier manhood to the study of the law, and
having a natural tendency towards office, he had attained,
many years ago, to a judicial situation in some inferior
court, which gave him for life the very desirable and im¬
posing title of judge. Later, he had engaged in politics,
and served a part of two terms in Congress, besides
making a considerable figure in both branches of the State
legislature. Judge Pyncheon was unquestionably an
honor to his race. He had built himself a country-seat
within a few miles of his native town, and there spent
such portions of his time as could be spared from public
service in the display of every grace and virtue — as a
newspaper phrased it, on the eve of an election — befitting
the Christian, the good citizen, the horticulturist, and
the gentleman.

There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves
in the glow of the Judge's prosperity. In respect to nat¬
ural increase, the breed had not thriven; it appeared

24 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

rather to be dying out. The only members of the family
known to be extant were, first, the Judge himself, and
a single surviving son, who was now travelling in Europe;
next, the thirty years' prisoner, already alluded to, and
a sister of the latter, who occupied, in an extremely retired
manner, the House of the Seven Gables, in which she
had a life-estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was
understood to be wretchedly poor, and seemed to make
it her choice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent
cousin, th^ Judge, had repeatedly offered her all the
comforts of life, either in the old mansion or his own
Tiodern residence. The last and youngest Pyncheon was
a little country-giri of seventeen, the daughter of another
of the Judge’s cousins, who Imd married a young woman
of no family or property, arul died early and in poor cir¬
cumstances. His widow had recently taken another
husband.

As for Matthew Maule’s posterity, it was supposed
now to be extinct. For a very loi^g period after the witch¬
craft delusion, however, the Maules had continued to
inhabit the town where their progenitor had suffered so
unjust a death. To all appearance, they were a quiet,
honest, well-meaning race of peoph', cherishing no malice
against individuals or the public for the wrong whicli
had been done them; or if, at their own fireside, they
transmitted, from father to child, any hostile recollection
of the wizard's fate and their lost patrimony, it was never
acted upon, nor openly expressed. Nor would it have
been singular had they ceased to remember that tlie
House of the Seven Gables was resting its heavy frame¬
work on a foundation that was rightfully their own.
There is something so massive, stable, and almost irre-

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

26

sistibly imposing in the exterior presentment of estab¬
lished rank and great possessions, that their very existence
seems to give them a right to exist; at least, so excellent
a counterfeit of right, that few poor and humble men have
moral force enough to question it, even in their secret
minds. Such is the case now, after so many ancient prej¬
udices have been overthrown; and it was far more so
in ante-Revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could
venture to be proud, and the low were content to be
abased. Thus the Maules, at all events, kept their re¬
sentments within their own breasts. They were gen¬
erally poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure;
working with unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts; la¬
boring on the wharves, or following the sea, as sailors be¬
fore the mast; living here and there about the town,
in hired.tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse
as the natural home of their old age. At last, after creep¬
ing as it were, for such a length of time, along the utmost
verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken
that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is the des¬
tiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. For
thirty years past, neither town-record, nor gravestone,
nor the directory, nor the knowledge or memory of man,
bore any trace of Matthew Maule's descendants. His
blood might possibly exist elsewhere; here, where its lowly
current could be traced so far back, it had ceased to keep
an onward course.

So long as any of the race were to be found, they had
been marked out from other men — not strikingly, nor
as with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt rather
than spoken of — by an hereditary character of reserve.
Their companions, or those who endeavored to become

26 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GaBLES

such, grew conscious of a circle round about the Maules^
within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an
exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it
was impossible for any man to step. It was this inde¬
finable peculiarity, perhaps, that, by insulating them
from human aid, kept them always so unfortunate in life.
It certainly operated to prolong in their case, and to con¬
firm to them as their only inheritance, those feelings of
repugnance and superstitious terror with which the
people of tiie town, even after awakening from their
frenzy, continued to regard the memory of the reputed
witches. The mantle, or rather the ragged cloak, of old
Matthew Maule, had fallen upon his children. They
were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes; the
family eye was said to possess strange power. Among other
good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was es¬
pecially assigned them, — that of exercising an influence
over people’s dreams. The Pyncheons, if all stories were
true, haughtily as they bore themselves in the noonday
streets of their town, were no better than bond-servants
to these plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy
commonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be,
will endeavor to reduce these alleged necromancies within
a system, instead of rejecting them as altogether fabulous.

A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-
gabled mansion in its more recent aspect, will bring this
preliminary chapter to a close. The street in whic) it
upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fash¬
ionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old ed¬
ifice was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they
were mostly small, built entirely of wood, and typical of
the most plodding uniformity of common life. Doubt-

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

27

/ess, however, the whole story of human existence may be
latent in each of them, but with no picturesqueness,
externally, that can attract the imagination or sympathy
to seek it there. But as for the old structure of our story^
its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crum¬
bling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in
the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and
meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind’s varied
experience had passed there, — so much had been suf¬
fered, and something, too, enjoyed, — that the very
timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It
was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own,
and full of rich and sombre reminiscences.

The deep projection of the second story gave the house
such a meditative look, that you could not pass it with¬
out the idea that it had secrets to keep, and an eventful
history to moralize upon. In front, just on the edge of the
unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon Elm, which, in refer¬
ence to such trees as one usually meets with, might well be
termed gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson
of the first Pyncheon, and, though now fourscore years of
age, or perhaps nearer a hundred, was still in its strong
and broad maturity, throwing its shadow from side to
side of the street, overtopping the seven gables, and sweep¬
ing the whole black roof with its pendent foliage. It gave
beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part
of nature. The street having been widened about forty
years ago, the front gable was now precisely on a line
with it. On either side extended a ruinous wooden fence
of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy
yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an
enormous fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly

28 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

an exaggeration to say, two or three feet long. Behind
the house there appeared to be a garden, which undoubt¬
edly had once been extensive, but was now infringed upon
by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations, and out¬
buildings that stood on another street. It would be an
omission, trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to
forget the green moss that had long since gathered over
the projections of the windows, and on the slopes of the
roof; nor must we fail to direct the reader’s eye to a
crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were grow¬
ing aloft in the air, not a great way from the chimney,
in the nook between two of the gables. They were called
Alice’s Posies. The tradition was, that a certain Alice
Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that the
dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed
a kind of soil for tliem, out of which they grew, when
Alice had long been in her grave. How'ever the flowers
might have come there, it was both sad and sweet to ob¬
serve how Nature adopted to herself this desolate, de¬
caying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family;
and how the ever-returning summer did her best to glad¬
den it with tender beauty, and grew melancholy in the
effort.

There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed,
but which, we greatly fear, may damage any picturesque
and romantic impression which we have been willing to
throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice. la the
front gable, under tho impending brow of the second story,
and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided
horizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper
segment, such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat
ancient date. This same shop-door had been a subject

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY

29

of no slight mortification to the present occupant of the
august Pyncheon House, as well as to some of her pred¬
ecessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle;
but, since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he
will please to understand, that, about a century ago, the
head of the Pyncheons found himself involved in serious
financial difficulties. The fellow (gentleman, as he styled
himself) can hardly have been other than a spurious inter¬
loper ; for, instead of seeking office from the king or the
royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to Eastern
lands, he bethought himself of no better avenue to wealth
than by cutting a shop-door through the side of his an¬
cestral residence. It was the custom of the time, indeed,
for merchants to store their goods and transact business
in their own dwellings. But there was something piti¬
fully small in this old Pynchcon’s mode of setting about
his commercial operations; it was whispered, that, with
his own hands, all beruffled as they were, he used to give
change for a shilling, and would turn a half-penny twice
over, to make sure that it was a good one. Beyond all
question, he had the blood of a petty huckster in his veins,
through whatever channel it may have found its way
there.

Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been
locked, bolted, and barred, and, down to the period of
our story, had probably never once been opened. The
old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop
remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed,
that the dead shopkeeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet
coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned
back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of
the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or

30 THE HOUSE OP THE SBV'EN’ GABIiES

poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. From the
look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be
his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his
accounts balance.

And now — in a very humble way, as will be seen —
We proceed to open our narrative.

n

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon — we will not say awoke, it being
doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as closed her
eyes during the brief night of midsummer — but, at all
events, arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it
would be mockery to term the adornment of her person.
Far from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imag¬
ination, at a maiden lady’s toilet! Our story must there¬
fore await Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber;
only presuming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy
sighs that labored from her bosom, with little restraint as
to their lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch
as they could be audible to nobody save a disembodied
listener like ourself. The Old Maid was alone in the old
house. Alone, except for a certain respectable and orderly
young man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for
about three months back, had been a lodger in a remote
gable, — quite a house by itself, indeed, — with locks,
bolts, and oaken bars on all the intervening doors. In¬
audible, consequently, ware poor Miss Hepzibah’s gusty
sighs. Inaudible the creaking joints of her stiffened
knees, as she knelt down by the bedside. And inaudible,
too, by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending
love and pity in the farthest heaven, that almost agony
of prayer — now whispered, now a groan, now a strug-

31

32 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

gling silence — wherewith she besought the Divine
assistance through the day! Evidently, this is to be a day
of more than ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for
above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict
seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just
as little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such
fervor prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the
cold, sunless, stagnant calm of a day that is to be like in¬
numerable yesterdays!

The maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she
now issue forth over the threshold of our story? Not
yet, by many moments. First, every drawer in the tall,
old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, \i'ith difficulty,
and with a succession o^' spasmodic jerks; then, all must
close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is
a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward
footsteps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect
Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upward into
a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her appearance
on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed
toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well,
indeed! who would have thought it! Is all this precious
time to be lavished on the matutinal repair and beauti¬
fying of an elderly person, who never goes abroad, whom
nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have
done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one's
eyes another way.

Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other
pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, we might
better say, — heightened and rendered intense, as it has
been, by sorrow and seclusion, — to the strong passion
of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small lock;

Where Haytthorme Wrote in the House op the Seven Gables.

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

33

she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is
probably looking at a certain miniature, done in Mal-
bone*3 most perfect style, and representing a face worthy
of no less delicate a pencil. It was once our good fortune
to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young man, in a
silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness
of which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie,
with its full, tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to
indicate not so much capacity of thought, as gentle and
voluptuous emotion. Of the possessor of such features
we shall have a right to ask nothing, except that he would
take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it.
Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah ? No;
she never had a lover — poor thing, how could she? —
nor ever knew, by her own experience, what love techni¬
cally means. And yet, her undying faith and trust, her
fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards
the original of that miniature, have been the only sub¬
stance for her heart to feed upon.

She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is stand¬
ing again before the toilet-glass. There are tears to be
wiped off. A few more footsteps to and fro; and here,
at last, — with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill,
damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has
accidentally been set ajar, — here comes Miss Hepzibah
Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-dark¬
ened passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long
and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs
like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is.

The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon,
was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A few
clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the earliest

34 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

light, and threw down its golden gleam on the windows
of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House
of the Seven Gables, which — many such sunrises as it
had witnessed — looked cheerfully at the present one.
The reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly,
the aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepzibah
entered, after descending the stairs. It was a low-stud¬
ded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with
dark wood, and having a large chimney piece, set round
with pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board,
through which ran the funnel of a modern stove. There
was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but
so worn and faded in these latter years that its once bril¬
liant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable
hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one,
constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as
many feet as a centipede; the other, most delicately
wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently
frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time
the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen
chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so
ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human
person that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed
the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which
they could have been adapted. One exception there was.
however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back,
carved elaborately, in oak, and a roomy depth within its
arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness,
for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound
in a modern chair.

As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but
two, if such they may be called. One was a map of the

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

35

Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not engraved, but
the handiwork of some skilful old draughtsman, and gro<
tesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild
beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history
of the region being as little known as its geography, which
was put down most fantastically awry. The other
adornment was the portrait of old Colonel Pyncheon, at
two-thirds length, representing the stern features of a Puri¬
tanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band
and a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and
in the other uplifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter ob¬
ject, being more successfully depicted by the artist, stood
out in far greater prominence than the sacred volume.
Face to face w'ith this picture, on entering the apart¬
ment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause; regard¬
ing it'with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the
brow, which, by people who did not know her, would prob¬
ably have been interpreted as an expression of bitter
anger and ill-will. But it was no such thing. She, in
fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage, of which only
a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be sus¬
ceptible ; and this forbidding scowl was the innocent re¬
sult of her near-sightedness, and an elfort so to concentrate
her powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the
object instead of a vague one.

We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression
of poor Hepzibah’s brow. Her scowl, — as the world, or
such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse
of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it, —
her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in
establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid;
nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at

35 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

herself in a dim looking-glass^ and perpetually encoonter*
ing her own frown within its ghostly sphere, she had
been led to interpret the expression almost as unjustly
as the world did. "How miserably cross I look I” she
must often have whispered to herself; and ultimately
have fancied herself so, by a sense of inevitable doom.
But her heart never frowned. It was naturally tender,
sensitive, and full of little tremors and palpitations;
all of which weaknesses it retained, while her visage
was growing so perversely stern, and even fierce. Nor
had Hepzibah ever any hardihood, except what came
from the very w’^armest nook in her affections.

All this time, however, we are loitering faint-heart¬
edly on the threshold of our story. In very truth, we
have an invineible reluctance to disclose what Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do.

It has already been observed, that, in the basement
story of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy
ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop
Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and
fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door,
but the inner arrangements, had been suffered to remain
unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep
over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair
of scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed.
It treasured itself up, too, in the half-open till, where
there still lingered a base sixpence, vvorth neitiier more
nor less than the* hereditary pride which had here been
put to shame. Such had been the state and condition of
the little shop in old Hepzibah*s childhood, when she and
her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken
precinct^. So it had remained, until within a few days past.

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

37

But now, though the shop-window was still closely
curtained from the public gaze, a remarkable change
had taken place in its interior. The rich and heavy
festoons of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral
succession of spiders their life’s labor to spin and
weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceiling.
The counter, shelves, and floor had all been scoured,
and the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue sand.
The brown scales, too, had evidently undergone rigid
discipline, in an unavailing effort to rub off the rust,
which, alas! had eaten through and through their sub¬
stance. Neither was the little old shop any longer
empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye, priv¬
ileged to take an account of stock, and investigate
behind the counter, would have discovered a barrel,
— yea, two or three barrels and half ditto, — one
containing flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps,
Indian meal. Tliere was likewrise a square box of
pine-wood, full of soap in bars; also, anotlier of the
same size, in which w'crc tallow-candlcs, ten to the
pound. A small stock of brown sugar, some white
beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of
low price, and such as are constantly in demand, made
up the bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might
have been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric re¬
flection of the old shop-keeper Pyncheon’s shabbily
provided shelves, save that some of the articles were
of a description and outward form which could hardly
have been known in his day. For instance, there was
a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar
rock; not, indeed, splinters of the veritable stone foun¬
dation of the famous fortress, but bits of delectable

38 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

candy, neatly done up in white paper. Jim Crow,
moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance,
in gingerbread. A party of leaden dragoons were gal¬
loping along one of the shelves, in equipments and uniform
of modern cut; and there were some sugar figures, with
no strong resemblance to the humanity of any epoch,
but less unsatisfactorily representing our own fashions
than those of a hundred years ago. Another phenomenon,
still mor? strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer
matches, which, in old times, would have been thought
actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the
nether fires of Tophet.

In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it
was incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken
the shop and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten
Mr. Pyncheon, and was about to renew the enterprise
of that departed worthy, with a different set of cus¬
tomers. Who could this bold adventurer be ? And, of all
places in the world, why had he chosen the House of the
Seven Gables as the scene of his commercial speculations ?

We return to the elderly maiden. She at length
withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of the
Colonel’s portrait, heaved a sigh, — indeed, her breast
was a very cave of ^olus that morning, — and stept
across the room on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of
elderly women. Passing through an intervening pas¬
sage, she opened a door that communicated with the
shop, just now so elaborately described. Owing to
the projection of the upper story — and still more to
the thick shadow of Hie Pyncheon Elm, which stood
almost directly in front of the gable — the twilight,
here, was 'Still as much akin to night as morning. An-

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

39

other heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah I After a mo¬
ment’s pause on the threshold, peering towards the window
with her near-sighted scowl, as if frowning down some
bitter enemy, she suddenly projected herself into the
shop. The haste, and, as it were, the galvanic impulse of
the movement, were really quite startling.

Nervously — in a sort of frenzy, we might almost
say — she began to busy herself in arranging some chil¬
dren’s playthings, and other little wares, on the shelves
and at the shop-window. In the aspect of this dark-
arrayed, pale-faced, lady-like old figure there was a
deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably
with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment. It
seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal a
personage should take a toy in hand; a miracle, that
the toy did not vanish in her grasp; a miserably ab¬
surd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff
and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt
iittle boys into her premises I Yet such is undoubt¬
edly her object. Now she places a gingerbread ele¬
phant against the window, but with so tremulous a
touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with the dismem¬
berment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to
be an elephant, and has become a few bits of musty
gingerbread. There, again, she has upset a tumbler
of marbles, all of which roll different ways, and each
individual marble, devil-directed, into the most diffi¬
cult obscurity that it can find. Heaven help our poor
old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous
^dew of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame
goes down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the
absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the

40 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

more inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the
very fact that we must needs turn aside and laugh at
her. For here, — and if we fail to impress it suitably
upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of the
theme, — here is one of the truest points of melan¬
choly interest that occur in ordinary life. It was the
final throe of what called itself old gentility. A lady
— who had fed herself from childhood with the shad¬
owy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose re¬
ligion it was that a lady’s hand soils itself irremedi¬
ably by doing aught for bread — this born lady, after
sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down
from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, treading
closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her
at last. She must earn her own food, or starve! And
we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irrev¬
erently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady i''
to be transformed into the plebeian woman.

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating
waves of our social life, somebody is always at ihv.
drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with as con¬
tinual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holi¬
day; and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as
when an hereditary noble sinks below his order.
More deeply * since, with us, rank is the grosser
substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and
has no spiritual existence after the death of these, but
dies hopelessly along with them. And, therefore,
since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce
our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would
entreat for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators
of her fate. Let us behold, in poor Hepzibah, the im-

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

41

memorial lady, — two hundred years old, on this aide
of the water, and thrice as many on the other, — with
her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records,
and traditions, and her claim, as joint heiress, to that
princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilder¬
ness, but a populous fertility, — born, too, in Pyncheon
Street, under the Pyncheon Elm, and in the Pyncheon
House, where she has spent all her days, — reduced now,
in that very house, to be the hucksteress of a cent-shop.

This business of setting up a petty shop is almost
the only resource of women, in circumstances at all
similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her
near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers,
at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a
seamstress; although her sampler, of flfty years gone
by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of
ornamental needlework. A school for little children had
been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had
begun a review of her early studies in the New England
Primer, with a view to prepare herself for the office
of instructress. But the love of children had never
been quickened in Hepzibah’s heart, and was now
torpid, if not extinct; she w'atched the little people of
the neighborhood from her chamber-window, and
doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimate
acquaintance with them. Besides, in our day, the
very ABC has become a science greatly too abstruse
to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter
to letter. A modern child could teach old Hepzibah
more than old Hepzibah could teach the child. So —
with many a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at
last coming into sordid contact with the world, from

42 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

which she had so long kept aloof, while every added
day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the
cavem-door of her hermitage — the poor thing be¬
thought herself of the ancient shop-window, the rusty
scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a
little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted
at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble
preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the enter¬
prise was now to be commenced. Nor was she entitled
to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate;
for, in the town of her nativity, we might point to sev¬
eral little shops of a similar description, some of them
in houses as ancient as that of the Seven Gables; and
one or two, it may be, where a decayed gentlewoman
stands behind the counter, as grim an image of family
pride as Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon herself.

It was overpoweringly ridiculous — we must hon¬
estly confess it — the deportment of the maiden lady
while setting her shop in order for the public eye.
She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if
she conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watch¬
ing behind the elm-tree, with intent to take her life.
Stretching out her long, lank arm, she put a paper of
pearl buttons, a jew’s-harp, or whatever the small ar¬
ticle might be, in its destined place, and straightway
vanished back into the dusk, as if the world need
never hope for another glimpse of her. It might have
been fancied, indeed, that she expected to minister to
the wants of the community unseen, like a disem¬
bodied divinity or enchantress, holding forth her bar¬
gains to the reverential and awe-stricken purchaser in an
invbible hand. But Hepzibah had no such flattering

THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW

43

dream. She was well aware that she must ultimately
come forward, and stand revealed in her proper individu¬
ality : but, like other sensitive persons, she could not bear
to be observed in the gradual process, and chose rather
to flash forth on the world’s astonished gaze at once.

The inevitable moment was not much longer to be
delayed. The sunshine might now be seen stealing
down the front of the opposite house, from the win¬
dows of which came a reflected gleam, struggling
through the boughs of the elm-tree, and enlightening
the interior of the shop more distinctly than hereto¬
fore. The town appeared to be waking up. A baker’s
cart had already rattled through the street, chasing
away the latest vestige of night’s sanctity with the jin¬
gle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A milkman was
distributing the contents of his cans from door to
door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman’s conch-shell
was heard far off, around the corner. None of these
tokens escaped Hcpzihah’s notice. The moment had
arrived. I’o delay longer would be only to lengthen
out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take
down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance
free — more than free — welcome, as if all were
household friends — to every passer-by, whose eyes
might be attracted by the commodities at the window.
This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar
fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most
astounding clatter. Then — as if the only barrier be¬
twixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a
flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through
the gap — she fled into the inner parlor, threw hersell
into the ancestral elbow-chair, and wept.

44 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoy¬
ance to a writer, who endeavors to represent nature,
its various attitudes and circumstances, in a reasona¬
bly correct outline and true coloring, that so much of
the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up
with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies
to him. What tragic dignity, for expmple can be
wrought into a scene like this! How can we elevate
our hbtory of retribution for the sin of long ago, when,
as one of our most prominent figures, we are compelled
to introduce — not a young and lovely woman, nor even
the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered by af¬
fliction— but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in
a long-waisted silk gown, an<l with the strange horror
of a turban on her head! Her visage is not even
ugly. It is redeemed from insignificance only by the
contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl.
And, finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that,
after sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient
to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a
small way. Nevertheless, if we look through all the
heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same
entanglement of something mean and trivial with
whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made
up of marble and mud. And, without all the deeper
trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might
hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, as well
as an immitigable frown, on the iron countenance of
fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of dis¬
cerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements,
the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to as¬
sume a garb so sordid.

in

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

• I

Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon sat in the oaken elbow-
chair, with her hands over her face, giving way to
that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most per¬
sons have experienced, when the image of hope itself
seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an
enterprise at onde doubtful and momentous. She
was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarum — high,
sharp, and irregular — of a little bell. The maiden lady
arose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow;
for she was an enslaved spirit, and this the talisman
to which she owed obedience. This little bell, — to
speak in plainer terms, — being fastened over the shop-
door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel
spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of
the house when any customer should cross the thresh¬
old. Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for
the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah’s periwigged
predecessor had retired from trade) at once set every
nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibra¬
tion. The crisis was upon her I Her first customer
was at the door!

Without giving herself time for a second thought
she rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in ges¬
ture and expression, scowling portentously, and look¬
ing far better qualified to do fierce battle with a house-

45

46 THE HOUSE OV THE SEVEN GABLES

breaker than to stand smiling behind the counter,
bartering small wares for a copper recompense. Any
ordinary customer, indeed, would have turned his
back and fled. And yet there was nothing fierce in
Hepzibah’s poor old heart; nor had she, at the mo¬
ment, a single bitter thought against the world at
Urge, or one individual man or woman. She wished
them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were
done with +hem and in her quiet grave.

The applicant, by this time, stood within the door¬
way. Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning
light, he appeared to have brought some of its cheery
influences into the shop along with him. It was a
slender young man, not more than one or two and
twenty years old, \^dth rather a grave and thoughtful
expression for his years, but likewise a springy alac¬
rity and vigor. These qualities were not only per¬
ceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but
made themselves felt almost immediately in his char¬
acter. A brown beard, not too silken in its texture,
fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding
it; he wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-
featured countenance looked all the better for these
natural ornaments. As for his dress, it was of the
simplest kind; a summer sack of cheap and ordinary
material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat,
by no means of the finest braid. Oak Hall might
have supplied his dhtire equipment. EIc was chiefly
marked as a gentleman--if such, indeed, he made
any claim to be — by the rather remarkable w'hiteness
and nicety of his clean linen.

He met ^e scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

47

alarm, as having heretofore encountered it and found
it harmless.

"So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,” said the daguerreo-
typist, — for it was that sole other occupant of the
seven-gabled mansion, — “I am glad to see that you
have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely
look in to offer my best wishes, and to ask if 1 can as¬
sist you further in your preparations. ”

People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner
at odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of
harsh treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for
it; whereas they give way at once before the simplest
expression of what they perceive to be genuine sym¬
pathy. So it proved with poor Hepzibah; for, when
she saw the young man’s smile, — looking so much the
brighter on a thoughtful face, — and heard his kindly
tone, she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then
began to sob.

"Ah, Mr. Holgrave,” cried she, as soon as she could
speak, “I never can go through with it! Never,
never, never! I wish I were dead, and in the old
family-tomb, with all my forefathers! With my father,
and my mother, and my sister! Yes, and with my
brotlier, who had far better find me there than here!
The world is too chill and hard, — and I am too old, and
too feeble, and too hopeless!"

“Oh, believe me. Miss Hepzibah,” said the young
man, quietly, “these feelings will not trouble you any
longer, after you are once fairly in the midst of your
enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment
standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long
seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes.

48 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABUES

which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants
and ogres of a child’s story-book. I find nothing so
singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its
substance the instant one actually grapples with it. So
it will be with what you think so terrible.”

“But I am a woman!” said Hepzibah, piteously.
“ 1 was going to say, a lady, — but I consider that as
past.”

“Well; no matter if it be past!” answered the artist;
a strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through
the kindliness of his manner. “Let it go! You are the
better without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pyn-
cheon! for are we not friends ? I look upon this as
one of the fortunate days ol your life. It ends an epoch
and begins one. Hitherto, the life-blood has been grad¬
ually chilling in your veins as you sat aloof, within your
circle of gentility, while the rest of the world was fight¬
ing out its battle with one kind of necessity or another.
Henceforth, you will at least have the sense of healthy
and natural effort for a purpose, and of lending your
strength — be it great or small — to the united struggle
of mankind. This is success, — all the success that
anybody meets with!”

“ It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should
have ideas like these,” rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up
her gaunt figure, with slightly offended dignity. “You
are a man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose,
as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view to
seeking your fortune. But I was bom a lady, and have
always lived one; no matter in what narrowness
of means, always a lady I ”

“But I. was not bom a gentleman; neither hsve 1

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

49

lived like one/' said Holgrave, slightly smiling; "so,
my dear madam, you will hardly expect me to sym¬
pathize with sensibilities of this kind; though, unless
I deceive myself, I have some imperfect comprehen¬
sion of them. These names of gentleman and lady
had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and
conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those
entitled to bear them. In the present — and still more in
the future condition of society — they imply, not
privilege, but restriction I”

“These are new notions,” said the old gentlewoman,
shaking her head. "1 shall never understand them;
neither do I wish it.”

“Wc will cease to speak of them, then,” replied the
artist, with a friendlier - smile than his last one, “and
I will leave you to feel whether it is not better to be a
true woman than a lady. Do you really think. Miss
Hepzibah, that any lady of your family has ever done
a more heroic thing, since this house was built, than
you are performing in it to-day? Never; and if the
Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I doubt whether
an old wizard Maule's anathema, of which you told
me once, would have had much weight with Provi¬
dence against them.”

“ Ah I — no, no ! ” said Hepzibah, not displeased at
this allusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse.
“If old Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could
see me behind the counter to-day, he would rail it the
fulfilment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for
your kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and I will do my utmost
to be a good shop-keeper.”

“Pray do,” said Holgrave, “and let me have the

dO THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

pleasure of being your first customer. I am about
taking a walk to the sea-shore, before going to my
rooms, where I misuse Heaven’s blessed sunshine by
tracing out human features through its agency. A
few of those biscuits dipt in the sea-water, will be just
what I need for breakfast. What is the price of half
a dozen ?”

"Let me be a lady a moment longer,’" replied Hep-
zibah, with a manner of antique stateliness to which
a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace. She put the
biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation.
"A Pyncheon must not, at all events under her fore¬
fathers’ roof, receive monc^ for a morsel of bread
from her only friend !”

Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the
moment, with spirits not quite so much depressed.
Soon, however, they had subsided nearly to their for¬
mer dead level. With a beating heart, she listened
to the footsteps of early passengers, which now began
to be frequent along the street. Once or twice they
seemed to linger; these strangers, or neighbors, as the
case might be, were looking at the display of toys and
petty commodities in Hepzibah’s shop-window. She
was doubly tortured; in part, with a sense of over¬
whelming shame that strange and unloving eyi'S should
have the privilege of gazing, and partly because the
idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity,
that the window was not arranged so skilfully, nor
nearly to so much advantage, as it might have been.
It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop
might depend on the display of a different set of arti¬
cles, or substituting a fairer apple for one which ap-

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

51

peared to be specked. So she made the change, and
straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by
it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the
juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old
maid, that wrought all the seeming mischief.

Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step,
betwixt two laboring men, as their rough voices denoted
them to be. After some slight talk about their own
affairs, one of them chanced to notice the shop-window,
and directed the other's attention to it.

“See here!" cried he; "what do you think of this?
Trade seems to be looking up in Pyncheon Street I”
"Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!" exclaimed
the other. “In the old Pyncheon House, and under¬
neath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would have thought
it ? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop I"
“Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?” said his
friend. “I don’t call it a very good stand. There’s
another shop just round the corner.”

“Make it go!" cried Dixey, with a most contemp¬
tuous expression, as if the very idea were impossible
to be conceived. “ Not a bit of it! Why, her face —
I’ve seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year —
her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself,
if he had ever so great a mind to trade with her. Peo¬
ple can’t stand it, I tell you! She scowls dreadfully,
reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper !’’

“Well, that’s not so much matter," remarked the
other man. “These sour-tempered folks are mostly
handy at business, and know pretty well what they are
about. But, as you say, I don’t think she’ll do much.
This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like

52 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

all other kinds of trade, handicraft, and bodily labor.
I know it, to my cost 1 My wife kept a cent-shop
three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay !*’

"Poor business!” responded Dixey, in a tone as h
he were shaking his head, — “poor business!”

For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze,
there had hardly been so bitter a pang in all her pre¬
vious misery about the matter as what thrilled Hepzi-
bah's heart, on overhearing the above conversation.
The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully
important; it seemed to hold up her image wholly re¬
lieved from the false light of her self-partialities, and
so hideous that she dared not look at it. She was ab¬
surdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect
that her setting up shop — an event of such breathless
interest to herself — appeared to have upon the pub¬
lic, of which these two men were the nearest repre¬
sentatives. A glance; a passing word or two; a coarse
laugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before they
turned the corner! They cared nothing for her dignity,
and just as little for her degradation. Then, also,
the augury of ill-success, uttered from tlie sure wisdom
of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clod
into a grave. The man’s wife had already tried the
same experiment, and failed ! How could the born lady,
— the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in
the world, at sixty years of age, — how could she over
dream of succeeding* when the hard, vulgar, keen,
busy, hackneyed New England woman had lost five
dollars on her little outlay 1 Success presented itself
as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wild hal¬
lucination.

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

53

Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive
Hepzibah mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind
of panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a
city all astir with customers. So many and so mag¬
nificent shops as there were I Groceries, toy-shops,
drygoods stores, with their immense panes of plate-
glass, their gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete
assortments of merchandise, in which fortunes had
been invested; and those noble mirrors at the farther
end of each establishment, doubling all this wealth by a
brightly burnished vista of unrealities I On one side
of the street this splendid bazaar, with a multitude of
perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bow¬
ing, and measuring out the goods. On the other, the
dusky old House of the Seven Gables, with the anti¬
quated shop-window under its projecting story, and
Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind
the counter, scowling at the world as it went by I This
mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a fair expres¬
sion of the odds against which she was to begin her strug^
gle for a subsistence. Success ? Preposterous! She
would never think of it again I The house might just
as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses
had the sunshine on them; for not a foot would ever
cross the threshold, nor a hand so much as try the door I
But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her
head, tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentle¬
woman’s heart seemed to be attached to the same steel
spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks, in
unison with the sound. The door was thrust open,
although no human form was perceptible on the othef
side of the half-window. Hepzibah, nevertheless, stood at

54 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking very much as
if she had^ summoned up an evil spirit, and were
afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the encounter.

"Heaven help me I*' she groaned, mentally. “Now
is my hour of need

The door, which moved with difficulty on its creak¬
ing and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square
and sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks
as red as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily (but,
as it seemed, more owing to his mother’s carelessness
than his father’s poverty), in a blue apron, very wide
and short trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes,
and a chip-hat, with the frizzles of his curly hair stick¬
ing through its crevices. A book and a small slate,
under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to
school. He stared at Hepzihah a moment, as an elder
customer than himself would have been likely enough
to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude
and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him.

“Well, child,” said she, taking heart at sight of a
personage so little formidable, — “ well, my child, what
did you wish for?”

“That Jim Crow there in the window,” answered
the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the
gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he
loitered along to school; “the one that has not a hro
ken foot.”

So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking
the effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her
first customer.

“No matter for the money,” said she, giving him a
little push towards the door; for her old gentility was

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

55

contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin,
and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanneas to take
the child’s pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale
gingerbread. "No matter for the cent. You are
welcome to Jim Crow."

The child, staring witli round eyes at this instance
of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large ex¬
perience of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread,
and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached
the sidewalk (little cannibal that he was I) than Jim
Crow’s head was in his mouth. As he had not been
careful to shut the door, Hepzihah was at the pains of
closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two
about the troublesomeness of young people, and par¬
ticularly of small boys. She had just placed another
representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the win¬
dow, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously,
and again the door being thrust open, with its charac¬
teristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little
urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his
exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal
feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly
visible about his mouth.

"What is it now, child ? ’’ asked the maiden lady, rather
impatiently; "did you come back to shut the door?”

“No,’’ answered the urchin, pointing to the figure
that Had just been put up; “I want that other Jim Crow. ”

“Well, here it is for you,” said Hepzibah, reach¬
ing it down; but recognizing that this pertinacious cus¬
tomer would not quit her on any other terms, so long
as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly
drew back her extended hand, “Where is the cent?”

56 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-
born Yankee, would have preferred the better bargaic
to the worse. Looking somewhat chagrined, he put
the coin into Hepzibah’s hand, and departed, sending
the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The
new shopkeeper dropped the first solid result of her
commercial enterprise into the till. It was done I
The sordid stain of that copper coin could never be
washed away from her palm. The little school-boy,
aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer, had
wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of an¬
cient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as
if his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled man¬
sion. Now let Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits
with their faces to the wall, and take the map of her East¬
ern territory to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the
flame with the empty breath of her ancestral traditions 1
What had she to do with ancestry ? Nothing; no more
than with posterity I No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah
Pyncheon, a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop I
Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas some¬
what ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether
surprising what a calmness had come over her. The
anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, whether
asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever since her proj¬
ect began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished
quite away. She felt the novelty of her position, ind^^ed,
but no longer with disturbance or affright. Now and
then, there came a thrill of almost youthful enjoyment.
It was the invigorating breath of a fresh outward atmos¬
phere, after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion
of her life. So wholesome is effort 1 So miraculous the

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

57

ri«

strength that we do not know of I The healthiest glow
that Hepzibah had known for years had come now in the
dreaded crisis, when, for the first time, she had put forth
her hand to help herself. The little circlet of the school¬
boy 's copper coin — dim and lustreless though it was, with
the small services which it had been doing here and there
about the world — had proved a talisman, fragrant with
good, and deserving to be set in gold and worn next her
heart. It was as potent, and perhaps endowed with the
same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring I Hepzibah, at
all events, was indebted to its subtile operation both in
body and spirit; so much the more, as it inspired her with
energy to get some breakfast, at which, still the better to
keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extra spoon¬
ful in her infusion of black tea.

Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on,
however, without many and serious interruptions of thh
mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, Providence
seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that
degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at
a reasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case
of our old gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort
had subsided, the despondency of her whole life threat¬
ened, ever and anon, to return. It was like the heavy
mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring the sky,
and making a gray twilight everywhere, until, towards
nightfall, it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine.
But, always, the envious cloud strives to gather again
across the streak of celestial azure.

Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but
rather slowly; in some cases, too, it must be owned, with
little satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Hepzibah:

58 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

nor, on the whole, with an aggregate of very rich emoluf
ment to the till. A little girl, sent by her mother to match
a skein of cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that
the near-sighted old lady pronounced extremely like,
but soon came running back, with a blunt and cross
message, that it would not do, and, besides, was very
rotten! Then, there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman,
not old but haggard, and already with streaks of gray
among her hair, like silver ribbons; one of those women,
naturally delicate, whom you at once recognize as worn
to death by a brute — probably a drunken brute — of a
husband, and at h^ast nine children. She wanted a few
pounds of flour, and offered the money, which the decayed
gentlewoman silently rejected, and gave the poor soul
better measure than if she had taken it. Shortly after¬
wards, a man in a blue cotton frock, much soiled, came
in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile,
with the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the
torrid atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his
entire system, like an inflammable gas. It was impressed
on Hepzibah*s mind that this was the husband of the
care-wrinkled woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco;
and as she had neglected to provide herself with the ar¬
ticle, her brutal customer dashed down his newly-bought
pipe and left the shop, muttering some unintelligible words,
which had the tone and bitterness of a curse. Hereupon
Hepzibah threw up her eyes, unintentionally scowling in
the face of Providenefe I

No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired
for ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar
brewage, and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off
in an exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

59

open, and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out
that the little bell played the very deuce with Hepzibah’s
nerves. A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the
neighborhood, burst breathless into the shop, fiercely
demanding yeast; and when the poor gentlewoman, with
her cold shyness of manner, gave her hot customer to
understand that she did not keep the article, this very
capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regu¬
lar rebuke.

"A cent-shop, and no yeast!*' quoth she; "that will
never do! Who ever heard of such a thing ? Your loaf
will never rise, no more than mine will to-day. You had
better shut up shop at once.*’

“Well,” said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, “perhaps
I had! ”

Several times, moreover, besides the above instance,
her lady-like sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by
the familiar, if not rude, tone with which people addressed
her. They evidently considered themselves not merely
her eq uals, but her patrons and superiors. Now, Hepzibah
had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there
would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about
lier person, which would insure an obeisance to her ster¬
ling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it. On
the other hand, no tiling tortured her more intolerably
than when this recognition w'as too prominently expressed.
To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, her re¬
sponses were little short of acrimonious; and, we regret
to say, Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian
state of mind by the suspicion that one of her customers
was drawn to the shop, not by any real need of the article
which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked wish to stare

80 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

at her. The vulgar creature was determined tc see for
herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristoc¬
racy, after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline
of her life apart from the world, would cut behind a
counter. In this particular case, however mechanical
and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepzibah’s
contortion of brow served her in good stead.

"1 never was so frightened in my life I** said the curious
customer, in describing the incident to one of her acquaint¬
ances. “ She’s a real old vixen, taj^e my word of it I She
says little, to be sure; but if you could only see the mis¬
chief in her eye! ”

On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our
decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions
as to the temper and manners of what she termed the
lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down
upon with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself
occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority. But,
unfortunately, she had likewise to struggle against a bitter
emotion of a directly opposite kind: a sentiment of viru¬
lence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which it
had so recently been her pride to belong. When a lady,
in a delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil
and gracefully swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal
lightness that made you look at her beautifully slippered
feet, to see whether she trod on the dust or floated in the
air, — when such a vision happened to pass through this
retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant
with her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been
borne along, — then again, it is to be feared, old Hep-
sibah’s scowl could no longer vindicate itself entirely on
the plea ot pear-sightedness.

The Front Hallwat.

The Iron studded door may be seen on the right. The stairway
in the farther end, the low celling, and the heavy broad boards of
the floor are characteristic of the early colonial houses. The
paper now on the wall was made to order and copied from frag«
ments of the original found when the house was restored.

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

61

"Fop what end,” thought she, giving vent to that feel¬
ing of hostility which is the only real abasement of the
poor in presence of the rich, — “for what good end, in
the wisdom of Providence, does that woman live ? Must
the whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may be
kept white and delicate ? ”

Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.

"May God forgive me!” said she.

Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the in¬
ward and outward history of the first half-day into con¬
sideration, Hepzibah began to fear that the shop would
prove her ruin in a moral and religious point of view,
without contributing very essentially towards even her
temporal welfare.

IV

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

Towards noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman,
large and portly, and of remarkably dignified demeanor,
passing slowly along on the opposite side of the white and
dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the Pyn-
cheon Elm, he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile,
to wipe the perspiration from his brow) seemed to scru¬
tinize, with especial interest, the dilapidated and rusty-
visaged House of the Seven Gables. He himself, in a
very different style, was as well worth looking at as the
house. No better model need be sought, nor could have
been found, of a very high order of respectability, which,
by some indescribable magic, not merely expressed itself
in his looks and gestures, but even governed the fashion
of his garments, and rendered them all proper and essential
to the man. Without appearing to differ, in any tan¬
gible way, from other people’s clothes, there was yet a
wide and rich gravity about tliem that must have been
a characteristic of the wearer, since it could not be defined
as pertaining either to the cut or material. His gold¬
headed cane, too, — a serviceable staff, of dark polished
wood, — had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a
walk by itself, would have been recognized anywhere as a
tolerably adequate representative of its master. This
character — which showed itself so strikingly in everything
about him, and the effect of which we seek to convey to

62

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

63

the reader — went no deeper than his station, habits of
life, and external circumstances. One perceived him to be
a personage of marked influence and authority; and,
especially, you could feel just as certain that he was op¬
ulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or as if you
had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm,
and, Midas-like, transmuting them to gold.

In his youth, he had probably been considered a hand¬
some man; at his present age, his brow was too heavy,
his temples too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye
too cold, his lips too closely compressed, to bear any re¬
lation to mere personal beauty. He would have made a
good and massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at
any previous period of his life, although his look might
grow positively harsh in the process of being fixed upon the
canvas. The artist would have found it desirable to
study his face, and prove its capacity for varied expres¬
sion ; to darken it with a frown, — to kindle it up with
a smile.

While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Fyn-
cheon House, both the frown and the smile passed succes¬
sively over his countenance. His eye rested on the shop-
window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles,
which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed
Hepzibah’s little arrangement of toys and commodities.
At first it seemed not to please him, — nay, to cause him
exceeding displeasure, — and yet, the very next moment,
he smiled. While the latter expression was yet on his lips,
he caught a glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily
bent forward to the window; and then the smile changed
from acrid and disagreeable to the sunniest complacency
and benevolence. He bowed, with a happy mixture of

64 THE HOUSE OF TEE SEVEN GABLES

dignity and courteous kindliness, and pursued his way.

"There he is!” said Hepzibah to herself, gulping down
a very bitter emotion, and, since she could not rid herself
of it, trying to drive it back into her heart. " What does
he think of it, I wonder? Does it please him? Ah! he
is looking back I”

The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned
himself half about, still with his eyes fixed on the shop^
window. In fact, he wheeled wholly round, and com¬
menced a step or two, as if designing to enter the shop;
but, as it chanced, his purpose was anticipated by Hep¬
zibah’s first customer, the little cannibal of Jim Crow,
who, staring up at the window, was irresistibly at¬
tracted by an elephant o> gingerbread. What a grand
appetite had this small urchin! — Two Jim Crows im¬
mediately after breakfast 1 — and now an elephant, as a
prelimimary whet before dinner! By the time this latter
purchase was completed, the elderly gentleman had re¬
sumed his way, and turned the street corner.

"Take it as you like. Cousin Jaffrey!” muttered the
maiden lady, as she drew back, after cautiously thrusting
out her head, and looking up and down the street, — “ take
it as you like! You have seen my little shop-window!
Well! — what have you to say ? — is not the Pyncheon
House my own, while Tm alive ? ”

After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back
parlor, where she at first caught up a liaif-finisheu stock¬
ing, and began knitting at it with nervous and in-egular
jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches,
she threw it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room.
At length, she paused before the portrait of the stem old
Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house.

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

65

In one sense, this picture had almost faded into the
canvas, and hidden itself behind the duskiness of age;
in another, she could not but fancy that it had been grow¬
ing more prominent, and strikingly expressive, ever since
her earliest familiarity with it as a child. For, while the
physical outline and substance were darkening away from
the beholder’s eye, the bold, hard, and, at the same time,
indirect character of the man seemed to be brought out
in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect may occasion¬
ally be observed in pictures of antique date. They acquire
a look which an artist (if he have anything like the com¬
placency of artists nowadays) would never dream of pre¬
senting to a patron as his own characteristic expression, but
which, nevertheless, we at once recognize as reflecting the
unlovely truth of a human soul. In such cases, the painter’s
deep conception of his subject’s inward traits has wrought
itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after the
superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time.

While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under
its eye. Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to
judge the character of the original so harshly as a percep¬
tion of the truth compelled her to do. But still she
gazed, because the face of the picture enabled her — at
least, she fancied so — to read more accurately, and to a
greater deptli, the face which she had just seen in the
street.

“This is the very man!” murmured she to herself.
“ Let Jaffrey Pyncheon smile as he will, there is that look
beneath 1 Put on him a skull-cap, and a band, and a black
cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other,
— then let Jaffrey smile as he might, — nobody would
doubt that it was the old Pyncheon come again! He has

66 THK HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

proved himself the very man to build up a new housed
Perhaps^ too, to draw down a new curse I”

Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fan¬
tasies of the old time. She had dwelt too much alone, —
too long in the Pyncheon House, — until her very brain
was impregnated with the dry-rot of its timbers. She
needed a walk along the noonday street to keep her sane.

By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up be¬
fore her, painted with more daring flattery than any ar¬
tist would have ventured upon, but yet so delicately
touched that the likeness remained perfect. Malbone’s
miniature, though from tlie same original, was far inferior
to Hepzibah’s air-drawn picture, at which affection and
sorrowful remembrance wrought together. Soft, mildly,
and cheerfully contemplative, with full, red lips, just on
the verge of a smile, which the eyes seemed to herald by
a gentle kindling-up of their orbs! Feminine traits,
moulded inseparably with those of the other sex! The
miniature, likewise, had this last peculiarity; so tliat you
inevitably thought of the original as resembling his mother,
and she a lovely and lovable woman, with perhaps some
beautiful infirmity of character, that made it all the pleas¬
anter to know and easier to love her.

"Yes,” thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was
only the more tolerable portion that welled up from her
heart to her eyelids, " they persecuted his mother in him!
He never waa a Pyncheon!”

But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from
a remote distance, — so far had Hepzibah descended into
the sepulchral depths of her reminiscences. On entering
the shop, she found an old man there, a humble resident
of Pyncheon Street, and whom, for a great many years

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

67

past, she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house.
He was an immemorial personage, who seemed always to
have had a white head and wrinkles, and never to have
possessed but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one,
in the front of the upper jaw. Well advanced as Hepzibah
was, she could not remember when Uncle Venner, as the
neighborhood called him, had not gone up and down the
street, stooping a little and drawing his feet heavily over
the gravel or pavement. But scill there was something
tough and vigorous about him, that not only kept him in
daily breath, but enabled him to fill a place which would
else have been vacant in the apparently crowded world.
To go of errands with his slow and shuffling gait, which
made you doubt how he ever was to arrive anywhere;
to saw a small household’s foot or two of firewood, or
knock to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine board
for kindling-stuff; in summer, to dig the few yards of
garden ground appertaining to a low-rented tenement,
and share the produce of his labor at the halves; in win¬
ter, to shovel away the snow from the sidewalk, or open
paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line; such
were some of the essential offices which Uncle Vennet
performed among at least a score of families. Within
that circle, he claimed the same sort of privilege, and
probably felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergyman
does in the range of his parishioners. Not that he laid
claitn to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous mode of rever*
ence, he went his rounds, every morning, to gather up the
crumbs of the table and overflowings of the dinner-pot,
as food for a pig of his own.

In his younger days — for, after all, there was a dim
tradition that he had been, not young, but younger-^

68 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Uncle Venner was commonly regarded as rather deficient,
than otherwise, in his wits. In truth he had virtually
pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such
success as other men seek, and by taking only that humble
and modest part in the intercourse of life which belongs
to the alleged deficiency. But now, in his extreme old
age, — whether it were that his long and hard experience
had actually brightened him, or that his decaying judg¬
ment rendered him less capable of fairly measuring him¬
self, — the venerable man made pretensions to no little
wisdom, and really enjoyed the credit of it. There was
likewise, at times, a vein of something like poetry in him;
it was the moss or wall-flower of his mind in its small dilap¬
idation, and gave a charm t'i what might have been vulgar
and commonplace in his earlier and middle life. Hepzi-
bah had a regard for him, because his name was ancient
in the town and had formerly been respectable. It was a
still better reason for awarding him a species of familiar
reverence that Uncle Venner was himself the most ancient
existence, whether of man or thing, in Pyncheon Street,
except the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the
elm that overshadowed it.

This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah,
clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and
must have accrued to him from the cast-off wardrobe of
some dashing clerk. As for his trousers, they were of
tow-cloth, very short in the legs, and bagging down
strangely in the real', but yet having a suitableness to his
figure which his other garment entirely lacked. His hat
had relation to no other part of his dress, and but very
little to the head that wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a
miscellaneous old gentleman, partly himself, but, in good

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

69

measure, somebody else; patched together, too, of differ¬
ent epochs; an epitome of times and fashions.

“So, you have really begun trade,” said he, — “really
begun trade! Well, Tm glad to see it. Young people
should never live idle in the world, nor old ones neither,
unless when the rheumatize gets hold of them. It has
given me warning already; and in two or three years
longer, I shall think of putting aside business and retiring
to my farm. That’s yonder, — the great brick house,
you know, — the workhouse, most folks call it; but I
mean to do my work first, and go there to be idle and en¬
joy myself. And I’m glad to see you beginning to do
your work. Miss Hepzibah ! ”

“Thank you, Unele Venner,” said Hepzibah, smiling;
for she always felt kindly towards the simple and talkative
old man. Had he been an old woman, she might probably
have repelled the freedom, which she now took in good
part. “ It is time for me to begin work, indeed! Or, to
speak the truth, I have just begun when I ought to be
giving it up.”

“ Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah! ” answered the
old man. “ You are a young woman yet. Why, I hardly
thought myself younger than I am now, it seems so little
while ago since I used to see you playing about the door
of the old house, quite a small child! Oftener, though,
you used to be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely
into the street; for you had always a grave kind of way
with you, — a grown-up air, when you were only the
height of my knee. It seems as if I saw you now: and
your grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and
his cocked hat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and
stepping so grandly up the street I Those old gentlemen

7G THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

that grew up before the Revolution used to put on grand
airs. In my young days, the great man of the town was
commonly called King; and his wife, not Queen to be sure,
but Lady. Nowadays, a man would not dare to be called
King; and if he feels himself a little above common folks,
he only stoops so much the lower to them. 1 met your
cousin, the Judge, ten minutes ago; and, in my old tow-
cloth trousers, as you see, the Judge raised his hat to me,
I do believe 1 At any rate, the Judge bowed and smiled I''

"Yes,” said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing
unawares into her tone; "my cousin Jaffrey is thought
to have a very pleasant smile! ”

"And so he has!” replied Uncle Venner. "And that’s
rather remarkable in a Pyncheon; for, begging your par¬
don, Miss Hepzibah, they never had the name of being an
easy and agreeable set of folks. There was no getting
close to them. But now. Miss Hepzibah, if an old man
may be bold to ask, why don’t Judge Pyncheon, with his
great means, step forward, and tell his cousin to shut up
her little shop at once? It’s for your credit to be doing
something, but it’s not for the Judge’s credit to let you!”

“We won’t talk of this, if you please. Uncle Venner,”
said Hepzibah, coldly. “I ought to say, however, that,
if I choose to earn bread for myself, it is not Judge Pyn-
cheon’s fault. Neither will he deserve the blame,” added
she, more kindly, remembering Uncle Venner’s privileges
of age and humble familiarity, " if I should, by and by, find
it convenient to retiife with you to your farm.”

"And it’s no bad place, either, that farm of mine!”
cried the old man, cheerily, as if there were something
positively delightful in the prospect. "No bad place is
the great brick farm-house, especially for them that will

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

71

find a good many old cronies there, as will be my case.
I quite long to be among them sometimes, of the winter
evenings; for it is but dull business for a lonesome elderly
man, like me, to be nodding, by the hour together, with
no company but his air-tight stove. Summer or winter,
there’s a great deal to be said in favor of my farm I And,
take it in the autumn, what can be pleasanter than to
spend a whole day on the sunny side of a barn or a wood-
pile, chatting with somebody as old as one’s self; or, per¬
haps, idling away the time with a natural-born simpleton,
who knows how to be idle, because even our busy Yankees
never have found out how to put him to any use? Upon
my word. Miss Hepzibah, I doubt whether I’ve ever been
so comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, which most
folks call the workhouse. But you, — you’re a young
V7oman yet, — you never need go there! Something
still better will turn up for you. I’m sure of it!”

Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in
her venerable friend’s look and tone; insomuch, that she
gazed into his face with considerable earnestness, en¬
deavoring to discover what secret meaning, if any, might
be lurking there. Individuals whose affairs have reached
an utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep them¬
selves alive with hopes, so much the more airily magnifi¬
cent as they have the less of solid matter within their
grasp whereof to mould any judicious and moderate ex¬
pectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah was
perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished
an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of for¬
tune would intervene in her favor. For example, an uncle
— who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never
been heard of since — might yet return, and adopt her to

72 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, and
adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Oriental shawls and
turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unreck-
onable riches. Or the member of Parliament, now at the
head of the English branch of the family, — with which
the elder stock, on this side of the Atlantic, had held little
or no intercourse for the last two centuries, — this eminent
gentleman might invite Hepzibah to quit the ruinous
House of the Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with
her kindred at Pyncheon Hall. But, for reasons the most
imperative, she could not yield to his request. It was more
probable, therefore, that the descendants of a Pyncheon
who had emigrated to Virginia, in some past generation,
and became a great planter tJicre, — hearing of llcpzibah’s
destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity of
character with which their Virginian mixture must have
enriched the New England blood, — would send her a re¬
mittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of repeating
the favor annually. Or, — and, surely, anything so un¬
deniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable
anticipation, — the great claim to the heritage of Waldo
County might finally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons;
so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah would
build a palace, and look down from its highest tower on
hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share of the
ancestral territory.

These were some of the fantasies which she had long
dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Venner’s
casual attempt at encouragement kindled a strange
festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her
brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with
gas. But either he knew nothing of her castles in the

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

73

air — as how should he ? — or else her earnest scowl dis¬
turbed his recollectioni as it might a more courageous
man’s. Instead of pursuing any weightier topic, Uncle
Venner was pleased to favor Hepzibah with some sage
counsel in her shop-keeping capacity.

“Give no credit!” — these were some of his golden
maxims, — “Never take paper-money! Look well to
your change! Ring the silver on the four-pound weight I
Shove back all English half-pence and base copper tokens,
such as are very plenty about town! At your leisure
hours, knit children’s woollen socks and mittens! Brew
your own yeast, and make your own ginger-beer!”

And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest
the hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he
gave vent to his final, and what he declared to be his all-
important advice, as follows: —

“Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile
pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for! A stale
article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go
off better than a fresh one that you’ve scowled upon.”

To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with
a sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle
Venner quite away, like a withered leaf, — as he was, —
before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself, however,
he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his
ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him.

“When do you expect him home?” whispered he.

“Whom do you mean?” asked Hepzibah turning pale.

“Ah? you don’t love to talk about it,” said Uncle Ven¬
ner. “ Well, well! we'll say no more, though there’s word
of it all over town. I remember him. Miss Hepzibah, be¬
fore he could run alone I”

74 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

During the remainder of the day poor Hepzibah ao«
quitted herself even less creditably, as a shop-keeper,
than in her earlier efforts. She appeared to be walking
in a dream; or, more truly, the vivid life and reality as¬
sumed by her emotions made all outward occurrences
unsubstantial, like the teasing phantasms of a half-con¬
scious slumber. She still responded, mechanically, to the
frequent summons of the shop-bell, and, at the demand
of her customers, went prying with vague eyes about the
shop, proifering them one article after another, and thrust¬
ing aside — perversely, as most of them supposed — the
identical thing they asked for. There is sad confusion,
indeed, when the spirit thus flits away into the past, or
into the more awful future, or, in any manner, steps across
the spaceless boundary betwixt its own region and the
actual world; where the body remains to guide itself as
best it may, with little more than mechanism of animal
life. It is like death, without death’s quiet privilege,
— its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when
the actual duties are comprised in such petty details as
now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman.
As the animosity of fate would have it, there was a great
influx of custom in the course of the afternoon. Hepzibah
blundered to and fro about her small place of business,
committing the most unheard-of errors: now stringing up
twelve, and now seven, tallow-candles, instead of ten to
the pound; selling ginger for Scotch snufP. pins for m'edles,
and needles for pins misreckoning her mange, sometimes
to the public detriment, and much oftener to her own;
and thus she went on, doing her utmost to bring chaos
back again, until, at the close of the day’s labor, to her
inexplicable astonishment, she found the money-drawer

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

75

almost destitute of coin. After all her painful traffic,
the whole proceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers,
and a questionable ninepence which ultimately proved
to be copper likewise.

At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that
the day had reached its end. Never before had she had
such a sense of the intolerable length of time that creeps
between dawn and sunset, and of the miserable irksome¬
ness of having aught to do, and of the better wisdom that
it would be to lie down at once, in sullen resignation, and
let life, and its toils and vexations, trample over one’s
prostrate body as they may I Hepzibah’s final operation
was with the little devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant,
who now proposed to eat a camel. In her bewilderment,
she offered him first a wooden dragoon, and next a handful
of marbles; neither of which being adapted to his else
omnivorous appetite, she hastily held out her whole re¬
maining stock of natural history in gingerbread, and hud¬
dled the small customer out of the shop. She then muf¬
fled the bell in an unfinished stocking, and put up the
oaken bar across the door.

During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand¬
still under the branches of the elm-tree. Hepzibah’s
heart was in her mouth. Remote and dusky, and with
no sunshine on all the intervening space, was that region
of the Past whence her only guest might be expected to
arrive! Was she to meet him now ?

Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest
interior of the omnibus towards its entrance. A gentle¬
man alighted; but it was only to offer his hand to a young
girl whose slender figure, nowise needing such assistance,
now lightly descended the steps, and made an airy little

76 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

jump from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded
her cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was
seen reflected on his own face as he reentered the vehicle.
The girl then turned towards the House of the Seven
Gables, to the door of which, meanwhile, — not the shop-
door, but the antique portal, — the omnibus-man had car¬
ried a light trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp
rap of the old iron knocker, he left his passenger and her
luggage at the door-step, and departed.

“Who can it be?” thought Hepzibah, who had been
screwing her visual organs into the acutest focus of which
they were capable. “The girl must have mistaken the
house! ”

She stole softly into the Jiall, and, herself invisible, gazed
through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young,
blooming, and very cheerful face, which presented itself
for admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a
face to which almost any door would have opened of its
own accord.

The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet
so orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once
recognized her to be, was widely in contrast, at that mo¬
ment, with everything about her. The sordid and ugly
luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the
house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her,
and the time-worn framework of the door, — none of these
things belonged to her sphere. But, c'Tn as a ray of sun¬
shine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously
creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem
altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the thres¬
hold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should
tiwing open to admit her. The maiden lady, herself, sternly

Phoebe’s Room, Showing Four-posted Chintz-covered Canopy over Be»

A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER

77

inhospitable in her purposes, soon began to feel that
the door ought to be shoved back, and the rusty key be
turned in tlie reluctant lock.

“Can it be Phoebe?” questioned she within herself.
"It must be little Phoebe; for it can be nobody else, —
and there is a look of her father about her, tool But
what does she want here ? And how like a country cousin,
to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so
much as a day’s notice, or asking whether she would be
welcome! Well; she must have a night’s lodging, I
suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go back to her
mother!”

Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little off¬
shoot of the Pyncheon race to whom we have already re¬
ferred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where
the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still par¬
tially kept up. In her own circle, it was regarded as by no
means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another without
invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet,
in consideration of Miss Hepzib^h’s recluse way of life,
a letter had actually been written and despatched, con¬
veying information of Phoebe's projected visit. This
epistle, for three or four days past, had been in the pocket
of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other
business in Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it con¬
venient to call at the House of the Seven Gables.

“No 1 — she can stay only one night,” said Hepzibah,
unbolting the floor. “ If Clifford were to find her here,
it might disturb himl”

V

MAY AND NOVEMBER

Phcebe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a
chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house.
It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable
hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the
window, and bathc'd the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings
in its own hue. There were curtains to Phoebe’s bed; a
dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff
which had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but
which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a
night in that one comer, while elsewhere it was beginning
to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into
the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded
curtains. Finding the new guest there, — with a bloom
on her cheeks like the morning’s own, and a gentle stir
of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze
moves the foliage, — the dawn kissed her brow. It was
the caress which a dewy maiden — such as the Dawn is,
immortally — gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the
impulse of irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty
hint that it is time now to unclose her eyes.

At the touch of those lips of light, Phoebe quietly awoke,
and, for a moment, did not recognize where she was, nor
how those heavy curtains chanced to be festooned around
her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely plain to her, except
that it was now early morning, and that, whatever might

78

MAY AND NOVEMBER

79

happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say
her prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from
the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially
the tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bed¬
side, and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had
been sitting there all night, and had vanished only just in
season to escape discovery.

When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the
window, and saw a rose-bush in the garden. Being a very
tall one, and of luxuriant growth, it had been propped
up against the side of the house, and was literally covered
with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A
large portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered,
had blight or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a
fair distanee, the whole rose-bush looked as if it had been
brought from Eden that very summer, together with the
mould in whieh it grew. The trutli was, nevertheless,
that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon, — she was
Phoebe’s great-great-grand-aunt, — in soil which, reckon¬
ing only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous
with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay. Grow¬
ing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers
still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator;
nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable, be¬
cause Phoebe’s young breath mingled with it, as the fra¬
grance floated past the w'indow. Hastening down the
creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way into
the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses,
and brought them to her chamber.

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess,
as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrange¬
ment. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these

80 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things
around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort
and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a
period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of
underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the
primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by one
night’s lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long
after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surround¬
ing shade. No less a portion of such homely witchcraft
was requisite to reclaim, as it were, Phoebe’s waste, cheer¬
less, and dusky chamber, which had been untenanted so
long — except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and ghosts
— that it was all overgrown with the desolation which
watches to obliterate every Lrace of man’s happier hours.
What was precisely Phoebe’s process we find it impossible to
say. She appeared to have no preliminary design, but
gave a touch here and another there; brought some articles
of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;
looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course
of half an hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly
and hospitable smile over the apartment. No longer ago
than the night before, it had resembled nothing so much
as the old maid’s heart; for there was neither sunshine
nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for ghosts
and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years
gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber.

There was still another peculiarity of this ijiscrut-
able chamber. The Jbedchamber, no doubt, was a cham¬
ber of very great and varied experience, as a scene of
human life: the joy of bridal nights had throbbed itself
away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath
here; and here old people had died. But — whether it

MAY AND NOVEMBER

81

were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence
might be — a person of delicate instinct would have known
at once that it was now a maiden’s bedchamber, and had
been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet
breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past
night, being such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom,
and now haunted the chamber in its stead.

After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phcebe
emerged from her chamber, with a purpose to descend
again into the garden. Besides the rose-bush, she had ob¬
served several other species of flowers growing there in a
wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another’s de¬
velopment (as is often the parallel case in human society)
by their uneducated entanglement and confusion. At
the head of the stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who,
it being still early, invited her into a room which she would
probably have called her boudoir, had her education em¬
braced any such French phrase. It was strewn about with
a few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-
desk ; and had, on one side, a large, black article of fur¬
niture, of very strange appearance, which the old gentle¬
woman told Phoebe was a harpsichord. It looked more
like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed, — not having
been played upon, or opened, for years, — there must have
been a vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air.
Human finger was hardly known to have touched its
chords since the days of Alice Pyncheon, who had learned
the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.

Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself
taking a chair near by, looked as earnestly at Pheebe’a
trim little figure as if she expected to see right into its
springs and motive secrets.

82 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"Cousin Phcebe,” said she, at last, "I really can’t see
my way clear to keep you with me.*’

These words, however, had not the inhospitable blunt¬
ness with which they may strike the reader; for the two
relatives, in a talk before bedtime, had arrived at a certain
degree of mutual understanding. Hepzibah knew enough
to enable her to appreciate the circumstances (resulting
from the second marriage of the girl’s mother) which made
it desirable for Phcebe to establish herself in another home.
Nor did she misinterpret Phoebe’s character, and the
genial activity pervading it, — one of the most valuable
traits of the true New England woman, — w'hich had im¬
pelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her fortune, but
with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit
as she could anywise receive. As one of her nearest kin¬
dred, she had naturally betaken herself to Hepzibah, with
no idea of forcing herself on her cousin’s protection, but
only for a visit of a week or two, which might be indefi¬
nitely extended, should it prove for the happiness of
both.

To Hepzibah’s blunt observation, therefore, Phcebe re¬
plied, as frankly, and more cheerfully.

“ Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said she.
” But I really think we may suit one another much better
than you suppose.”

“ You are a nice girl, — J see it plainly,” continued Hep¬
zibah ; " and it is not any question as to that point v iiich
makes me hesitate. 3ut, Phcebe, this house of miu(3 is
but a melancholy place for a young person to be in. It
lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret
and upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in
the sunshine! And as for myself, you see what I am, —

MAY AND NOVEMBER

83

a dismal and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call my¬
self old, Phoebe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the
best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be/' I cannot
make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe, neither can 1 so
much as give you bread to eat/’

"You will find me a cheerful little body,” answered
Phoebe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity;
"and I mean to earn my bread. You know I have not
been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many things
in a New England village.”

"Ahl Phoebe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, "your knowl¬
edge would do but little for you here! And then it is a
wretched thought that you should fling away your young
days in a place like this. Those cheeks would not be so
rosy after a month or two. Look at my face I ” — and,
indeed, -the contrast was very striking, — “you see how
pale I am! It is my idea that the dust and continual de¬
cay of these old houses are unwholesome for the lungs.”

"There is the garden, — the flowers to be taken care
of,” observed Phmbe. “I should keep myself healthy
with exercise in the open air. ”

“And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly
rising, as if to dismiss the subject, “ it is not for me to say
who shall be a guest or inhabitant of the old Pyncheon
House. Its master is coming.”

"Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Phoebe, in
surprise.

"Judge Pyncheon I” answered her cousin, angrily.
" He will hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no!
But, Phoebe, you shall see the face of him I speak of.”

She went in quest of the miniature already described,
and returned with it in her hand. Giving it to Phoebe,

84 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

she watched her features narrowly, and with a certain jeal¬
ousy as to the mode in which the girl would show herself
affected by the picture.

"How do you like the face?’’ asked Hepzibah.

"It is handsome I — it is very beautiful V* said Phoebe,
admiringly. " It is as sweet a face as a man’s can be, or
ought to be. It has something of a child’s expression, —
and yet not childish, — only one feels so very kindly to¬
wards him I He ought never to suffer anything. One
would bea: much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow.
Who is it. Cousin Hepzibah?”

“Did you never hear,” whispered her cousin, bending
towards her, " of Clifford Pyncheon ? ”

“ Never I I thought there were no Pyncheons left, ex¬
cept yourself and our cousin Jaffrey,” answered Phoebe.
" And yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pyn¬
cheon. Yes! — from my father or my mother; but has
he not been a long while dead ? ”

“Well, well, child, perhaps he has!” said Hepzibah,
with a sad, hollow laugh; "but, in old houses like this,
you know, dead people are very apt to come back again!
We shall see. And, Cousin Phoebe, since, after all that I
have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part
so soon. You arc welcome, my child, for the present,
to such a home as your kinswoman can offer you.”

With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a
hospitable purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.

They now went below stairs, where Phoebe — not so
much assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by the
magnetism of innate fitness — took the most active part
in preparing breakfast. The mistress of the house, mean¬
while, as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable

MAY AND NOVEMBER

85

cast, stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet con¬
scious that her natural inaptitude would be likely to im¬
pede the business in hand. Phoebe, and the fire that boiled
the teakettle, were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient,
in their respective offices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her
habitual sluggishness, the necessary result of long solitude,
as from another sphere. She could not help being in-
tere^ed, however, and even amused, at the readiness with
which her new inmate adapted herself to the circum¬
stances, and brought the house, moreover, and all its rusty
old appliances, into a suitableness for her purposes.
Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious effort,
and with frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceed¬
ingly pleasant to the ear. This natural tunefulness made
Phoebe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree; or copveyed
the idea-that the stream of life warbled through her heart
as a brook sometimes warbles through a pleasant little dell.
It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament,
finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beau¬
tiful ; it was a New England trait, — the stern old stuff
of Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.

Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the
family crest upon them, and a china tea-set painted over
with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast, in as gro¬
tesque a landscape. These pictured people were odd
humorists, in a world of their own, — a world of vivid bril¬
liancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the
teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself
of tea-drinking.

“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these
cups, when she was married,” said Hepzibah to Phcebe.
“ She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were al-

86 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

most the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one
of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it.
But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when
I remember what my heart has gone through without
breaking.”

The cups — not having been used, perhaps, since Hep-
zibah’s youth — had contracted no small burden of dust,
which Phoebe washed away with so much care and delicacy
as to satisfy even the proprietor of this invaluable china.

" What a nice little housewife you are! ” exclaimed the
latter, smiling, and, at the same time, frowning so pro*
digiously that the smile was sunsliine under a thunder¬
cloud. “Do you do other things as well? Are you as
good at your book as you ai '' at washing teacups ? ”

“ Not quite, 1 am afraid,” said Phoebe, laughing at the
form of Hepzibah’s question. “But I was school-mistress
for the little children in our district last summer, and
might have been so still.”

“ Ah! *tis all very well! ” obser\ ed the maiden lady,
drawing herself up. “ But these things must have come to
you with your mother’s blood. 1 never knew a Pyncheon
that had any turn for them.”

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are
generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficien-
c!ies than of their available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this
native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pyncheons to
any useful purpose. She regarded it as an hereditary
trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but, unfortunately, a mor¬
bid one, such as is often generated in families that remain
long above the surface of society.

Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang
sharply, and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final

The China Closet in the Reception Room.

It contains a set of rare old china above and quaint g>rger Jars

below.

MAY AND NOVEMBER

87

cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly
piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the
second day is generally worse than the first; we return to
the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in
our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied
herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to
this peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as
it might, the sound always smote upon her nervous sys¬
tem rudely and suddenly. And especially now, while,
with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was
flattering herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an un¬
speakable disinclination to confront a customer.

“Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!*' cried Pheebe,
starting lightly up. "I am shop-keeper to-day.”

“You, child!” exclaimed Hepzibah. “What can a
little ^country-girl know of such matters ? ”

“ Oh, 1 have done all the shopping for the family at our
village store,” said Phoebe. “And I have had a table at
a fancy fair, and made better sales than anybody. These
things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack
that comes, I suppose,” added she, smiling, “with one’s
mother’s blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little
saleswoman as I am a housewife I ”

The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped
from the passage-way into the shop, to note how she
would manage her undertaking. It was a case of some
intricacy. A very ancient woman, in a white short gown
and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her
neck, and what looked like a nightcap on her head, had
brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of
the shop. She was probably the very last person in town
who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant

88 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and
hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of
Phoebe, mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still
better to contrast their figures, — so light and bloomy, — so
decrepit and dusky, — with only the counter betwixt
them, in one sense, but more than threescore years, in an¬
other. As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and
craft pitted against native truth and sagacity.

“Was not that well done?” asked Phoebe, laughing,
when the customer was gone.

“ Nicely done, indeed, child! ” answered Hepzibah. " I
could not have gone through with it nearly so well. As
you say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on the
mother’s side.”

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which per¬
sons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the
bustling world regard the real actors in life’s stirring
scenes; so genuine, in fact that the former are usually
fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming
that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible
with others, which they choose to deem higher and more
important. Thus, Hepzibah was well content to acknowl¬
edge Phoebe’s vastly superior gifts as a shop-keeper; she
listened, with compliant ear, to her suggestion of various
methods whereby the influx of trade might be increased,
and rendered profitable, without a hazardous outlay of
capital. She consented that the village maiden should
manufacture yeast, both liquid and in cakes; and should
brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the palate, and
of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake
and exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes, which whoso¬
ever tasted would longingly desire to taste again. All

MAY AND NOVEMBER

such proofs of a ready mind and skilful handiwork were
highly acceptable to the aristocratic bucksteress, so long
as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a
half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity,
and growing affection, —

“What a nice little body she is I If she could only be
a lady, too! — but that’s impossible I Phoebe is no Pyn-
cheon. She takes everything from her mother.”

As to Phoebe’s not being, a lady, or whether she were a
lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but
which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in
any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England, it would
be impossible to meet with a person combining so many
lady-like attributes with so many others that form no nec¬
essary (if compatible) part of the character. She shocked
no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with her¬
self, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances.
Her figure, to be sure, — so small as to be almost child¬
like, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to
it than rest, — would hardly have suited one’s idea of a
countess. Neither did her face — with the brown ring¬
lets on either side, and the slightly piquant nose, and the
wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half
a dozen freckles, friendly remembrancers of the April sun
and breeze — precisely give us a right to call her beautiful.
But there was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was
very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in
the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam
of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twin¬
kling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall
while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her
claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to ro-

90 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

gard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and avail-
aoility combined, in a state of society, if there were any
such, where ladies did not exist. There it should be
woman’s ofiSce to move in the midst of practical affairs, and
to gild them all, the very homeliest, — were it even the
scouring of pots and kettles, — with an atmosphere of
loveliness and joy.

Such was the sphere of Phcebe. To find the bom and
educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther
than Hepzibah, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and
rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and ridiculous con¬
sciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely
territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her rec¬
ollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a
harpsichord, and walked a minuet, and worked an antique
tapestry-stitch on her sampler. It was a fair parallel be¬
tween new Plebeianism and old Gentility.

It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House
of the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still
certainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness
glimmering through its dusky windows as Phcebe passed
to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to
explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon be¬
came aware of the girl’s presence. There was a great run
of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o’clock until
towards noon,—relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but re¬
commencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a
half an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of
the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer
of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day had signalized
his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries
and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed, as she summed up

MAY AND NOVEMBER

91

fier aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah,
6rst drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the
sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver
intermixed, that had jingled into the till.

“We must renew our stock. Cousin Hepzibahl’* cried
the little saleswoman. “The gingerbread figures are all
gone, and so are those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most
of our other playthings. There has been constant inquiry
for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trum¬
pets, and jew’s-harps; and at least a dozen little boys
have asked for molasses-candy. And we must contrive
to get a peck of russet apples, late in the season as it is.
But, dear cousin, w hat an enormous heap of copper! Pos¬
itively a copper mountain !’*

“ Well done! well done! well done! ” quoth Uncle Ven-
ner, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the
shop several times in the course of the day. “ Here’s a girl
that will never end her days at my farm I Bless my eyes,
what a brisk little soul! ”

“ Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl! ” said Hepzibah, with a scowl
of austere approbation. “ But, Uncle Venner, you have
known the family many years. Can you tell me whether
there ever was a Pyncheon whom she takes after?”

“I don’t believe there ever was,” answered the ven¬
erable man. “ At any rate, it never was my luck to see
her like among them, nor, for that matter, anywhere else.
I’ve seen a great deal of the world, not only in people’s
kitchens and back-yards, but at the street-corners, and on
the wharves, and in other places where my business calls
me; and I’m free to say. Miss Hepzibah, that I never
knew a human creature do her work so much like one of
God’s anffels as this child Phenbe does^'”

92 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather too high-
strained for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a
sense in which it was both subtile and true. There was
a spiritual quality in Phoebe’s activity. The life of the
long and busy day — spent in occupations that might so
easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect — had been
made pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace
with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of
her character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had
the easy i.nd flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil,
but let their good works grow out of them; and so did
Pheebe.

The two relatives — the young maid and the old one —
found time before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to
make rapid advances towards affeetion and confidence.
A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable
frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being ab¬
solutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal in¬
tercourse ; like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she
Is ready to bless you when once overcome.

The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satis¬
faction in leading Pheebe from room to room of the house,
and recounting the traditions with which, as we may say,
the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the
indentations made by the lieutenant-governor’s sword-
hilt in the door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel
Pyncheon, a dead host, had received his affrighted visitors
with an awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown,
Hepzibah observed, was thought to be lingering ever since
in the passage-way. She bade Phoebe step into one of the
tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon
territory at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she

MAY AND NOVEMBER

93

laid her finger, there existed a silver-mine, the locality of
which was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of
Colonel Pyncheon himself, but only to be made known
when the family claim should be recognized by govern¬
ment. Thus it was for the interest of all New England
that the Fyncheons should have justice done them. She
told, too, how that there was undoubtedly an immense
treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere about the
house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.

“If you should happen to find it, Phoebe,” said Hep-
zibah, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile,
“we will tie up the shop-bell for good and all 1”

“Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phoebe; “but, in the
mean time, I hear somebody ringing it!”

When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather

vaguely, and at great length, about a certain Alice

_

Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly beautiful and
accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago.
The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still
lingered about the place where she had lived, as a dried
rosebud scents the drawer where it has withered and
perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great
and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white,
and gradually faded out of the world. But, even
now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the
Seven Gables, and, a great many times, — especially when
one of the Pyncheons was to die, — she had been heard
playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One
of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual
touch, had been written down by an amateur of music;
it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day,
could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow

94 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

had made them know the still profounder sweetness of iti

“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?*'
inquired Phcebe.

“The very same/* said Hepzibah. “It was Alice Pyn-
cheon’s harpsichord. When I was learning music, my
father would never let me open it. So, as I could only
play on my teacher's instrument, 1 have forgotten all my
music long ago.”

Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to
talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be
A well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow cir¬
cumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in
one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Hol-
grave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had
the strangest companions imaginable; men with long
beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new¬
fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance
lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists ;|
community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,
who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived
on the scent of other people’s cookery, and turned up their
noses at the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had
read a paragraph in a penny paper, the other day, accus¬
ing him of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing
matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For
her own part, she had reason to believe tliat he practised
animal magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion now¬
adays, should be apt to suspect him of studying the Black
Art up there in his Ibnesome chamber.

“ But, dear cousin,” said Phoebe, “ if the young man is
so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he dne.s
nothing worse, he may set the house on fire I ”

MAY AND NOVEMBER

95

"Why, sometimes," answered Hepzibah, "I have
seriously made it a question, whether I ought not to send
him away. But with all his oddities he is a quiet kind of a
person, and has such a way of taking hold of one’s mind,
that, without exactly liking him (for I don’t know enough
of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him
entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances when
she lives so much alone as 1 do.’’

'’But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!’’ remon¬
strated Phoebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep
within the limits of law.

“Oh!" said Hepzibah, carelessly, —for, formal as she
was, still, in her life’s experience, she had gnashed her
teeth against human law, — “1 suppose he has a law of
his ownl"

VI

MAULE’S WELL

After an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into
the garden. The enclosure had formerly been very ex¬
tensive, but was now contracted within small compass,
and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences, and
partly by the outbuildings of houses that stood on another
street. In its centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruin¬
ous little structure, which showed just enough of its orig¬
inal design to indicate that it had once been a summer¬
house. A hop-vine, springing from last year’s root, was
beginning to clamber over it, but would be long in cover¬
ing the roof with its green mantle. Three of the seven
gables either fronted or looked sideways, with a dark so¬
lemnity of aspect, down into the garden.

The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a
long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of
flowers, and the stalks and seed-vessels of vagrant and law¬
less plants, more useful after their death than ever while
flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed years
would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds
(symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always
prone to root themselves about human dwellings. Phoebe
saw, however, that uieir growth must have been checked
by a degree of careful labor, bestowed daily and system¬
atically on the garden. The white double rose-bush had
evidently been propped up anew against the house since

96

The Old Well in the Garden.

This Is a restoration of the original well which doubtless suggested

Maule's Well”

MAULB’S WELL

97

the commencement of the season; and a pear-tree
three damson-trees, which, except a row of currant-biuhes*
constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore marks of the
recent amputation of several superfluous or defective limbs.
There were also a few species of antique and hereditary
flowers, in no very flourishing condition, but scrupulously
weeded; as if some person, either out of love or curiosity,
had been anxious to bring them to such perfection as they
were capable of attaining. The remainder of the garden
presented a well-selected assortment of esculent vege¬
tables, in a praiseworthy state of advancement. Summer
squashes, almost in their golden blossom; cucumbers,
now evincing a tendency to spread away from the main
stock, and ramble far and wide; two or three rows of
string-beans, and as many more that were about to festoon
themselves on poles; tomatoes, occupying a site so shel¬
tered and sunny that the plants were already gigantic,
and promised an early and abundant harvest.

Phoebe wondered whose care and toil it could have been
that had planted these vegetables, and kept the soil so
clean and orderly. Not surely her cousin Hepzibah^s,
who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment
of cultivating flowers, and — with her recluse habits, and
tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadL w of
the house — would hardly have come forth under the
speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity
of beans and squashes.

It being her first day of complete estrangement bom
rural objects, Pheebe found an unexpected charm in this
little nook of grass, and foliage, and aristocratic flowers,
and plebeian vegetables. The eye of Heaven seemed to
look down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, as

98 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

if glad to perceive that Nature, elsewhere overwhelmed,
and driven out of the dusty town, had here been able to
retain a breathing-place. The spot acquired a somewhat
wilder grace, and yet a very gentle one, from the fact that
a pair of robins had built their nest in the pear-tree, and
were making themselves exceedingly busy and happy in
the dark intricacy of its boughs. Bees, too, strange,
to say, — had thought it worth their while to come hither,
possibly from the range of hives beside some farm-house
miles away. How many aerial voyages might they have
made, in quest of honey, or honey-laden, betwixt dawn
and sunset! Yet, late as it now was, there still arose a
pleasant hum out of one or two of the squash-blossoms, in
the depths of which these bees were plying their golden
labor. There was one other object in the garden which
Nature might fairly claim as her inalienable property,
in spite of whatever man could do to render it his own.
This was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy
stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared to be
a sort of mosaic-work of variously colored pebbles. The
play and slight agitation of the water, in its upward gush,
wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and
made a eontinually shifting apparition of quaint figures,
vanishing too suddenly to be definable. Thence, swelling
over the rim of moss-grown stones, the water stole away
under the fence, through what we regret to call a gutter,
rather than a channel.

Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very
Te\ erend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of the
garden, not a great way from the fountain. It now con¬
tained only Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary
chicken. All of them were pure specimens of a breed

MACJLE’S WELli

99 ;

which had been transmitted down as an heirloom in
the Pyncheon family, and were said, while in their
prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and,
on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince's
table. In proof of the authenticity of this legendary re¬
nown, Hepzibah could have exhibited the shell of a great
egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been ashamed of.
Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger
than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect,
and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melan¬
choly tone throughout all the variations of their duelling
and cackling. It was evident that the race had degener¬
ated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of too
strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered
people had existed too long in their distinct variety; a
fact of which the present representatives, judging by their
lugubrious deportment, seemed to be aware. They kept
themselves alive, unquestionably, and laid now and then
an egg, and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure
of their own, but that the world might not absolutely lose
what had once been so admirable a breed of fowls. The
distinguishing mark of the hens was a crest of lamentably
scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly and wick¬
edly analogous to Hepzibah's turban, that Pheebe — to
the poignant distress of her conscience, but inevitably —
was led to fancy a general resemblance betwixt these for¬
lorn bipeds and her respectable relative.

The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread,
cold potatoes, and other such scraps as were suitable to
the accommodating appetite of fowls. Returning, she
gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to recognize. The
chicken crept through the pales of the coop and ran, with

100 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Bome show of liveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and
the ladies of his household regarded her with queer, side¬
long glances, and then croaked one to another, as if com¬
municating their sage opinions of her character. So wise,
as well as antique, was their aspect, as to give color to the
idea, not merely that they were the descendants of a time-
honored race, but that they had existed, in their individual
capacity, ever since the House of the Seven Gables was
founded, and were somehow mixed up with its destiny.
They were a species of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; al¬
though wiitged and feathered differently from most other
guardian angels.

“Here, you odd little chicken!” said Phcebe; “here
are some nice crumbs for you I”

The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable
in appearance as its mother, — possessing, indeed, the
whole antiquity of its progenitors in miniature, — mus¬
tered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on
Phcebe's shoulder.

“That little fowl pays you a high compliment 1” said a
voice behind Phcebe.

Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young
man, who had found access into the garden by a door
opening out of another gable than that whence she had
emerged. He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Phoebe
was gone in quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy him¬
self with drawing up fresh earth about the roots of the
tomatoes.

“The chicken really treats you like an old acquaint¬
ance,” continued he, in a quiet way, while a smile made
his face pleasanter than Phoebe at first fancied it.
“Those venerable personages in the coop, too, seem veiy

MAULE*S WELL

101

affably disposed. You are lucky to be in their good graces
so soon I They have known me much longer, but never
honor me with any familiarity, though hardly a day passes
without my bringing them food. Miss Hepzibah, I sup¬
pose, will interweave the fact with her other traditions,
and set it down that the fowls know you to be a Pyn-
cheon I ”

“The secret is,” said Phoebe, smiling, “that I have
learned how to talk with hens and chickens.”

”Ah, but these hens,” answered the young man,—
“these hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to un¬
derstand the vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I pre¬
fer to think — and so would Miss Hepzibah — that they
recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?”

“My name is PhcEbe Pyncheon,” said the girl, with
a manner of some reserve; for she was aware that her
new acquaintance could be no other than the daguerre-
otypist, of whose lawless propensities the old maid had
given her a disagreeable idea. “ I did not know that
my cousin Hepzibah’s garden was under another per¬
sonas care.”

“Yes,” said Holgrave, “I dig, and hoe, and weed,
in this black old earth, for the sake of refreshing my¬
self with what little nature and simplicity may be left in
it, after men have so long sown, and reaped here. I turn
up the earth by way of pastime. My sober occupation,
so far as 1 have any, is with a lighter material. In short,
I make pictures out of sunshine; and, not to be too much
dazzled with iny own trade, I have prevailed with Miss
Hepzibah to let me lodge in one of these dusky gables. It
is like a bandage over one’s eyes, to come into it. But
would you like to see a specimen of my productions ?”

102 THE HOCJSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?” asked
Phcebe, with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice her
own youthfulness sprang forward to meet his. "1 don’t
much like pictures of that sort, — they are so hard and
stem; besides dodging away from the eye, and trying
to escape altogether. They are conscious of looking
very unamiable, 1 suppose, and therefore hate to be
seen.”

"If you would permit me,” said the artist, looking at
Phcebe, “I should like to try whether the daguerreotype
can bring out disagreeable traits on a perfectly amiable
face. But there certainly is truth in what you have said.
Most of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very
sufficient reason, 1 fancy, is, because the originals are so.
There is a wonderful insight iu Heaven’s broad and simple
sunshine. While we give it credit only for depicting the
merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character
with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon,
even could he detect it. There is, at least, no flattery in
my humble line of art. Now, here is a likeness which I
have taken over and over again, and still with no better
result. Yet the original wears, to common eyes, a very
different expression. It would gratify me to have your
judgment on this character.”

He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco
case. Phcebe merely glanced at it, and gave it back.

"I know the face,” she replied; “for its stern eye has
been following me about all day. It is my Puritan an¬
cestor, who hangs yonder in the parlor. To be sure, you
have found some way of copying the portrait without its
black velvet cap and gray beard, and have given him a
modem coat and satin cravat, instead of his cloak and

MAULE’S WELL

103

band. 1 don’t think him improved by your altera¬
tions.”

** You would have seen other differences had you looked
a little longer,” said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently
much struck. “1 car. assure you that this is a modern
face, and one which you will very probably meet. Now,
the remarkable point is, that the original wears, to the
world’s eye, — and, for aught I know, to his most intimate
friends, — an exceedingly pleasant countenance, indica¬
tive of benevolence, openness of heart, sunny good-humor,
and other praiseworthy qualities of that cast. The sun,
as you see, tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed
out of it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part.
Here we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and,
withal, cold as ice. Ix)ok at that eye! Would you like
to be at its mercy ? At that mouth! Could it ever smile ?
And yet, if you could only see the benign smile of the orig¬
inal ! It is so much the more unfortunate, as he is a public
character of some eminence, and the likeness was intended
to be engraved.”

“Well, I don’t wish to see it any more,” observed
Phoebe, turning away her eyes. “ It is certainly very like
the old portrait. But my cousin Hepzibah has another
picture, — a miniature. If the original is still in the world,
I think he might defy the sun to make him look stern
and hard.”

“You have seen that picture, then!” exclaimed the
artist, with an expression of much interest. “ I never did,
but have a great curiosity to do so. And you judge fa¬
vorably of the face ? ”

“There never was a sweeter one,” said Phoebe. “It
is almost too soft and gentle for a man’s.”

104 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

"Is there nothing wild in the eyeV* continued Hol-
grave, so earnestly that it embarrassed Phoebe, as did also
the quiet freedom with which he presumed on their so re¬
cent acquaintance. "Is there nothing dark or sinister
anywhere ? Could you not conceive the original to have
been guilty of a great crime?”

"It is nonsense,” said Phoebe, a little impatiently,
"for us to talk about a picture which you have never seen.
You mistake it for some other. A crime, indeed! Since
you are a friend of my cousin Hepzibah’s, you should ask
her to show you the picture.”

“It will suit my purpose still better to see the orig¬
inal,” replied the daguerreotypist coolly. “As to his
character, we need not disc uss its points; they have al¬
ready been settled by a competent tribunal, or one which
called itself competent. But, stay! Do not go yet, if
you please I I have a proposition to make you.”

Phcebe was on the point of retreating, but turned back,
with some hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend
his manner, although, on better observation, its feature
seemed rather to be lack of ceremony than any approach to
offensive rudeness. There was an odd kind of authority,
too, in what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the gar¬
den were his own than a place to which he was admitted
merely by Hepzibah*s courtesy.

“If agreeable to you,” he observed, “it would give me
pleasure to turn over these flowers, and those ancic^nt and
respectable fowls, to your care. Coming fresh from coun¬
try air and occupations, you will soon feel the need of some
such out-of-door employment. My own sphere does not so
much lie among flowers. You can trim and tend them,
therefore, as you please; and I will ask only the least trifle

MAULE’S WELL

105

of a blossom, now and then, in exchange for all the good,
honest kitchen-vegetables with which 1 propose to enrich
Miss Hepzibah’s table. So we will be fellow-laborers,
somewhat on the community system.”

Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance,
Phcebe accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed,
but busied herself still more with cogitations respecting
this young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found
herself on terms approaching to familiarity. She did
not altogether like him. His character perplexed the
little country-girl, as it might a more practised observer;
for, while the tone of his conversation had generally been
playful, the impression left on her mind was that of grav¬
ity, and, except as his youth modified it, almost sternness.
She rebelled, as it were, against a certain magnetic element
in the artistes nature,- which he exercised towards her,
possibly without being conscious of it.

After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shad¬
ows of the fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw
an obscurity over the garden.

"There,” said Holgrave, “it is time to give over work I
That last stroke of the hoc has cut off a beanstalk. Good¬
night, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon! Any bright day, if you
will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and come to my
rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of sun¬
shine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer.”

He retired towards his own solitary gable, but turned
his head, on reaching the door, and called to Phoebe, with
a tone which certainly had laughter in it, yet which seemed
to be more than half in earnest.

Be careful not to drink at Maulers well I ” said he.
"Neither drink nor bathe your face in it I”

106 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

“Maule’s well!” answered Phoebe. “Is that it with
the rim of mossy stones? 1 have no thought of drinking
there, — but why not?”

“Oh,” rejoined the daguerreotypist, “because, like an
old lady’s cup of tea, it is water bewitched I ”

He vanished; and Phoebe, lingering a moment, saw a
glimmering light, and then the steady beam of a lamp, in
a chamber of the gable. On returning into Hepzibah’s
apartment of the house, she found the low>studded parlor
so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate the
interior. She was indistinctly aware, however, that the
gaunt figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of
the straight-backed chairs, a little withdrawn from the
window, the faint gleam of which showed the blanched
paleness of her cheek, turned sideway towards a corner.

“ Shall 1 light a lamp. Cousin Hepzibah ? ” she asked.

“Do, if you please, my dear child,” answered Hepzibah.
“ But put it on the table in the corner of the passage,
my eyes are weak; and I can seldom bear the lamp¬
light on them.”

What an instrument is the human voice! How won¬
derfully responsive to every emotion of the human soul!
In Hepzibah’s tone, at that moment, there was a certain
rich depth and moisture, as if the words, commonplace as
they were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart.
Again, while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phmhe fan¬
cied that her cousin spoke to her.

“In a moment, cousin I” answered the girl. “These
matches just glimmer, and go out.”

But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed
to hear the murmur of an unknown voice. It was
strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulate

MAULE’S WELL

107

words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the ut¬
terance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the intel¬
lect. So vague was it, that its impression or echo in
Phoebe’s mind was that of unreality. She concluded
that she must have mistaken some other sound for that
of the human voice; or else that it was altogether in her
fancy.

She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again en¬
tered the parlor. Hepzibah’s form, though its sable out¬
line mingled with the dusk, was now less imperfectly vis¬
ible. In the remoter parts of the room, however, its
walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there was nearly
the same obscurity as before.

“Cousin,” said Phcebe, “did you speak to me just
now?”

“No, child!” replied Hepzibah.

Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious
music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful,
the tone seemed to gush up out of the deep well of Hepzi-
bah’s heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion. There
was a tremor in it, too, that — as all strong feeling is elec¬
tric— partly communicated itself to Phcebe. The girl
sat silently for a moment. But soon, her senses being very
acute, she became conscious of an irregular respiration
in an obscure corner of the room. Her physical organ¬
ization, moreover, being at once delicate and healthy,
gave her a perception, operating with almost the effect of
a spiritual medium, that somebody was near at hand.

“My dear cousin,” asked she, overcoming an indefin¬
able reluctance, “ is there not some one in tlie room with
us?”

“Phoebe, my dear little girl,” said Hepzibah, alter

108 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

a moment’s pause, " you were up betimes, and have been
busy all day. Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must
need rest. I will sit in the parlor awhile, and collect my
thoughts. It has been my custom for more years, child,
than you have lived!”

While thus dismissing her, the maiden ladystept for¬
ward, kissed Phoebe, and pressed her to her heart, which
beat against the girl’s bosom with a strong, high, and tu¬
multuous swell. How came there to be so much love in
this desolate old heart, that it could afford to well over
thus abundantly ?

’’Good night, cousin,” said Phoebe, strangely affected
by Hepzibah’s manner. ” If you begin to love me, I am
glad t”

She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep,
nor then very profoundly. At some uncertain period in
the depths of night, and, as it were, through the thin veil
of a dream, she was conscious of a footstep mounting the
stairs heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice
of Hepzibah, with a hush through it, was going up along
with the footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin’s
voice, Phoebe heard that strange, vague murmur, which
might be likened to an indistinct shadow of human ut¬
terance.

VII

THE GUEST

When Phoebe awoke, — which she did with the early
twittering of the conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,
— she heard movements below stairs, and, hastening
down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stood
by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her
nose, as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaint¬
ance with its contents, since her imperfect vision made it
not very easy to read them. If any volume could have
manifested its essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it
would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah’s
hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith
have steamed with the fragrance of venison, turkeys,
capons, larded partridges, puddings, cakes, and Christ¬
mas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture and concoc¬
tion. It was a cookery book, full of innumerable old
fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engrav-'
ings, which represented the arrangements of the table at
such banquets as it might have befitted a nobleman to
give in the great hall of his castle. And, amid these rich
and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of which,
probably, had been tested, within the memory of any
man’s grandfather), poor Hepzibah was seeking for some
nimble little titbit, which, with what skill she had, and
such materials as were at hand, she might toss up for
breakfast.

109

110 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume,
and inquired of Phoebe whether old Speckle, as she called
one of the hens, had laid an egg the preceding day.
Phoebe ran to see, but returned without the expected treas¬
ure in her hand. At that instant, however, the blast of a
fish-dealer’s conch was heard, announcing his approach
along the street. With energetic raps at the shop-window.
Hepzibah summoned the man in, and made purchase of
what he warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and
as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early in
the season. Requesting Phoebe to roast some coffee, —
which she casually observed was the real Mocha, and so
long kept that each of the small berries ought to be worth
its weight in gold, — the mniden lady heaped fuel into the
vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace in such quantity as
soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen. The
country-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, pro¬
posed to make an Indian cake, after her mother’s peculiar
method, of easy manufacture, and which she could vouch
for as possessing a richness, and, if rightly prepared, a deli¬
cacy, unequalled by any other mode of breakfast-cake.
Hepzibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the scene
of savory preparation. Perchance, amid their proper
element of smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-con¬
structed chimney, the ghosts of departed cook-maids
looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the great breadth
of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projected meal,
yet ineffectually pining to thrust their sliadowy hands into
each inchoate dish. The half-starved rats, at any rate,
stole visibly out of their hiding-places, and sat on their
hind-legs, snuffing the fumy atmosphere, and wistfully
aw'aiting an opportunity to nibble.

THE GUEST 111'

Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say
the truth, had fairly incurred her present meagreness by
often choosing to go without her dinner rather than be
attendant on the rotation of the spit, or ebullition of the
pot. Her zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an heroic
test of sentiment. It was touching, and positively worthy
of tears (if Phcebe, the only spectator, except the rats and
ghosts aforesaid, had not been better employed than in
shedding them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and
glowing coals, and proceed to broil the mackerel. Her
usually pale cheeks were ail ablaze with heat and hurry.
She watched the fish with as much tender care and mi¬
nuteness of attention as if, — we know not how to express
it otherwise, — as if her own heart were on the gridiron,
and her immortal happiness were involved in its being
done precisely to a turn!

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than
a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and
when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better ac¬
cord than at a later period; so that the material delights
of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed,
without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or
conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the
animal department of our nature. The thoughts, too,
that run around the ring of familiar guests have a pi¬
quancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth,
which more rarely find their way into the elaborate inter¬
course of dinner. Hepzibah’s small and ancient table,
supported on its slender and graceful legs, and covered
with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be
the scene and centre of one of the cheerfuUest of parties.

112 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the
shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the
Mocha might have gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar,
or whatever power has scope over a modern breakfast-
table. Phoebe’s Indian cakes were the sweetest offering
of all, — in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the in¬
nocent and golden age, — or, so brightly yellow were they,
resembling some of the bread which was changed to glis¬
tening gold when Midas tried to eat it. The butter must
not be forgotten, — butter which Phoebe herself had
churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her
cousin as a propitiatory gift,—smelling of clover-blossoms
and diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through the
dark-panelled parlor. All this, with the quaint gorgeous¬
ness of the old china cups and saucers, and the crested
spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah’s only other ar¬
ticle of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set
out a board at which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyn-
cheon’s guests need not have scorned to take his place.
But the Puritan’s face scowled down out of the picture, as
if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.

By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe
gathered some roses and a few other flowers, possessing
either scent or beauty, and arranged them in a glass
pitcher, which, having long ago lost its handle, was so
much the fitter for a flower-vase. The early sunshine — as
fresh as that which peeped into Eve’s bower while she and
Adam sat at breakfast there — came twinkling through
the branches of the pear-tree, and fell quite across the
table. All was now ready. There were chairs and plates
for three. A chair and plate for Hepzibah, — the same
for Phoebe, — but what other guest did her cousin look for ?

THE GUEST

113

Throughout this preparation there had been a con¬
stant tremor in Hepzibah's frame; an agitation so power¬
ful that Phoebe could see the quivering of her gaunt
shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the kitchen wall, or
by the sunshine on the parlor floor. Its manifestations
were so various, and agreed so little with one another,
that the girl knew not what to make of it. Sometimes
it seemed an ecstasy of delight and happiness. At such
moments, Hepzibah would fling out her arms, and infold
Phoebe in them, and kiss her cheek as tenderly as ever
her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable
impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tender¬
ness, of which she must needs pour out a little, in order
to gain breathing-room. The next moment, without any
visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy shrank
back,, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning;
or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of
her heart, where it had long lain chained, while a cold,
spectral sorrow took the place of the imprisoned joy,
that was afraid to be enfranchised, — a sorrow as black
as that was bright. She often broke into a little, ner¬
vous, hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could
be; and forthwith, as if to try which was the most touch¬
ing, a gush of tears would follow; or perhaps the laughter
and tears came botli at once, and surrounded our poor
Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rain¬
bow. Towards Phcebe, as we have said, she was affec¬
tionate, — far tenderer than ever before, in their brief
acquaintance, except for that one kiss on the preceding
night, — yet with a continually recurring pettishness
and irritability. She would speak sharply to her; then,
throwing aside all the starched reserve of her ordinary

114 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

manner, ask pardon, and the next instant renew the
just-forgiven injury.

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she
took Phoebe's hand in her own trembling one.

“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “for truly
my heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for 1 love
you, Phoebe, though I speak so roughly! Think nothing
of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be kind, and
only kind! ”

“My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has
happened?” asked Phoebe, with a sunny and tearful
sympathy. “What is it that moves you so?”

“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hep-
zibah, hastily wiping her eyes. “Let him see you first,
Phoebe; for you are young and rosy, and cannot help
letting a smile break out whether or no. He always
liked bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears
are hardly dry on it. He never could abide tears. There;
draw the curtain a little, so that the shadow may fall
across his side of the table! But let there be a good deal
of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some
people are. He has had but little sunshine in his life,
— poor Clifford, — and, oh, what a black shadow! Poor,
poor Clifford!”

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather
to her own heart than to Phoebe, the old gentle woman
stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such arrange¬
ments as suggested^themselves at the crisis.

Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above
stairs. Phoebe recognized it as the same which had passed
upward, as through her dream, in the night-time. The
approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause

THE GUEST

115

at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in
the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time,
the delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from
a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in mo¬
tion, or as if the person’s feet came involuntarily to a
stand-still because the motive-power was too feeble to sus¬
tain his progress. Finally, he made a long pause at the
threshold of the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the
door; then loosened his grasp without opening it. Hep-
zibah, her hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the
entrance.

“Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don’t look so!” said
Phoebe, trembling; for her cousin’s emotion, and this
mysteriously reluctant step, made her feel as if a ghost
were coming into the room. “ You really frighten me I
Is something awful going to happen?”

“Hush!” whispered Hepzibah. “Be cheerful I what¬
ever may happen, be nothing but cheerful 1”

The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that
Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed forward,
threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand.
At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in
an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and
wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length.
It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust
it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very
brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that
his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which,
slowly, and with as indefinite an aim as a child’s first jour¬
ney across a floor, had just brought him hitherward.
Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might
not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was

116 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

the spirit of the man that could not walk. The express
sion of his countenance — while, notwithstanding, it had
the light of reason in it — seemed to waver, and glimmer,
and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again.
It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-
extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if
it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward, — more
intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either
to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once
extinguished.

For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood
still, retaining Hepzibah's hand, instinctively, as a child
does that of the grown person who guides it. He saw
Phoebe, however, and caught an illumination from her
youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a
cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected
brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was stand¬
ing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak
nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at cour¬
tesy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an idea,
or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such as
no practised art of external manners could have attained.
It was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as rec¬
ollected afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole
man.

“Dear Clifford,*’ said Hepzibah, in the tone with which
one soothes a wayward infant, “ this is our cousin Phoebe,
— little Phoebe ^yncheon, — Arthur’s only child, you
know. She hae come from the country to stay with us
awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely
now,”

“ Phoebe ? — Phoebe Pyncheon ? — Phoebe ? ” repeated

The Dining Room. Showing Buffet with Ancient Silver.

THE GUEST

117

the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance.
“Arthur’s child I Ah, I forget t No matter 1 She is
very welcome 1”

“Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,” said Hepzibah,
leading him to his place. “Pray, Phcebe, lower the cur¬
tain a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast.”

The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and
looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to
grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to
his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired
to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded,
cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some
other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses.
But the effort was too great to be sustained with more
than a fragmentary success. Continually, as we may
express it, he faded away out of his place; or, in other
words, his mind and consciousness took their departure,
leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure — a sub¬
stantial emptiness, a material ghost — to occupy his seat
at table. Again, after a blank iroment, there would be
a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened
that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its
best to kindle the heart’s household fire, and light up intel¬
lectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it
was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant.

At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still im¬
perfect animation, Phcebe became convinced of what she
had at first rejected as too extravagant and startling an
idea. She saw that the person before her must have been
the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin Hep-
zibah’s possession. Indeed, with a feminine eye for cos¬
tume, she had at once identified the damask dressing-gown,

118 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

which enveloped him, as the same in figure, material, and
fashion, with that so elaborately represented in the pic¬
ture. This old, faded garment, with all its pristine bril¬
liancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to
translate the wearer’s untold misfortune, and make it
perceptible to the beholder’s eye. It was the better to
be discerned, by this exterior type, how worn and old were
the soul’s more immediate garments; that form and coun¬
tenance, the beauty and grace of which had almost tran¬
scended the skill of the most exquisite of artists. It
could the more adequately be known that the soul of the
man must have suffered some miserable wrong from its
earthly experience. There he seemed to sit, with a dim
veil of decay and ruin b<'twixt him and the world, but
through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the
same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which
Malbone — venturing a happy touch, with suspended
breath — had imparted to the miniature! There had
been something so innately characteristic in this look,
that all the dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity
which had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to de¬
stroy it.

Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fra¬
grant coffee, and presented it to her guest. As his eyes
met hers, he seemed bewildered and disquieted.

“Is this you, Hepzibah?” he murmured, sadly; then,
more apart, and perhaps unconscious that he was over¬
heard, “ How chapged 1 how changed! And is she angry
with me ? Why does she bend her brow so ? ”

Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which
time and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward dis¬
comfort, had rendered so habitual that any vehemence of

THE GUEST

iig

mood invariably evoked it. But at the indistinct murmur
of his words her whole face grew tender, and even lovely,
with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features
disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.

“Angry!” she repeated; “angry with you, Clifford!”

Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plain¬
tive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet
without subduing a certain something which an obtuse
auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as
if some transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling
sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its
physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal har¬
mony, — so deep was the sensibility that found an organ
in Hepzibah’s voice!

“There is nothing but love, here, Clifford,” she added,
— “ nothing but love! You are at home! ”

The guest responded to her tone by a smile, whicli did
not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however, and
gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty.
It was followed by a coarser expression; or one that had
the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline ot
his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual
to temper it. It was a look of appetite. He ate food with
what might almost be termed voracity; and seemed to
forget himself, Hepzibah, the young girl, and everything
else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which the boun¬
tifully spread table afforded. In his natural system,
ihoiigh high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility
to the delights of the palate was probably inherent. It
would have been kept in check, however, and even con¬
verted into an accomplishment, and one of the thousand
modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal char-

120 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

acteristics retained their vigor. But as it existed now.
the effect was painful and made Fhcebe droop her eyes.

In a little while the guest became sensible of the fra¬
grance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly.
The subtile essence acted on him like a charmed draught,
and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to
grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spir¬
itual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre
than hitherto.

“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his
utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought
to escape him. “This is what I need! Give me more!”

Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more
erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took
note of what it rested on. It was not so much that his
expression grew more intellectual; this, though it had its
share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither was
what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to
present itself in remarkable prominence. But a certain
fine temper of being was now not brought out in full relief,
but changeably and imperfectly betrayed, of which it was
the function to deal with all beautiful and enjoyable
things. In a character where it should exist as the chief
attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite
taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness.
Beauty would be his life; his aspirations would all tend
toward it; and, allowing his frame and physical organs
to be in consonance, his own developments would likewise
be beautiful. Such a man should have nothing to do with
sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the martyrdom
which, in an infinite variety of shapes, awaits those who
have the heart, and will, and conscience, to fight a battle

THE GUEST

121

with the world. To these heroic tempers, such martyrdom
is the richest meed in the world's gift. To the individual
before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due proportion
with the severity of the infliction. He had no right to be
a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and
so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, and
noble spirit would, methinks, have been ready to sacrifice
what little enjoyment it might have planned for itself, —
it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,
— if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might
come tempered to such a man.

Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed (Clif¬
ford's nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even
there, in the dark old parlor, in the inevitable polarity
with which his eyes were attracted towards the quivering
play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage. It was
seen in his appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the
scent of which he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to
a physical organization so refined that spiritual ingredi¬
ents are moulded in with it. It was betrayed in the un^
conscious smile with which he regarded Phoebe, whose fresh
and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers, —
their essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode of
manifestation. Not less evident was this love and neces¬
sity for the Beautiful, in the instinctive caution with
which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from his hostess,
and wandered to any quarter rather than come back. It
was Hepzibah’s misfortune, — not Clifford's fault. How
could he, — so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so sad of
mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban on her head,
and that most perverse of scowls contorting her brow, —
how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her

122 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

no affection for so much as she had silently given? He
owed her nothing. A nature like Clifford’s can contract
no debts of that kind. It is — we say it without censure,
nor in diminution of the claim which it indefeasibly pos¬
sesses on beings of another mould — it is always selfish
in its essence; and we must give it leave to be so, and
heap up our heroic and disinterested love upon it so much
the more, without a recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew
this truth, or, at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long
estranged from what was lovely as Clifford had been, she
rejoiced — rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a sC'
cret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber — that he
had brighter objects now before his eyes than her aged and
uncomely features. They never possessed a charm; and
if they had, the canker of her grief for him would long
since have destroyed it.

The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his
countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a troubled
look of effort and unrest. He was seeking to make himself
more fully sensible of the scene around him; or, perhaps,
dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was
vexing the fair moment wdth a struggle for some added
brilliancy and more durable illusion.

“How pleasant! — How delightful!” he murmured,
but not as if addressing anyone. “Will it last? How
balmy the atmosphere tlirough that open windov''! An
open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine!
Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl’s
face, how cheerful, how blooming! — a flower with the
dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this
must be all a dream! A dream I A dream I But it has
quite hidden the four stone walls! ”

THE GUEST

123

Then his face darkened^ as if the shadow of a cavern or
a dungeon had come over it; there was no more light in
its expression than might have come through the iron
grates of a prison window, — still lessening, too, as if he
were sinking farther into the depths. Phcebe (being of
that quickness and activity of temperament that she sel¬
dom long refrained from taking a part, and generally a
good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself
moved to address the stranger.

" Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning
in the garden,” said she, choosing a small crimson one
from among the flowers in the vase. “There will be but
five or six on the bush this season. This is the most per¬
fect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it.
And how sweet it is! — sweet like no other rose! One
can never forget that scent! ”

“Ah! —let me see!—let me hold it!” cried the guest,
eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to
remembered oders, brought innumerable associations
along with the fragrance that it exhaled. “ Thank you I
This has done me good. I remember how I used to prize
this flower, — long ago, I suppose, very long ago! — or
was it only yesterday? It makes me feel young again I
Am I young? Either this remembrance is singularly
distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how
kind of the fair young girl! Thank you 1 Thank you I ”
The favorable excitement derived from this little crim¬
son rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment which he
enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted
longer, but that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to
rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy
frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene

124 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.
The guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, and
addressed Hepzibah with what might easily be recognized
as the licensed irritability of a petted member of the fam-
ily.

“ Hepzibah I — Hepzibah 1 ” cried he with no little force
and distinctness, “why do you keep that odious picture
on the wall ? Yes, yes! — that is precisely your taste I
I have told you, a thousand times, that it was the evil gen¬
ius of the house! — my evil genius particularly! Takp
it down, at once!”

‘ "Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, sadly, "you know it
cannot be!”

"Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking with
some energy, "pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad
enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border and tas¬
sels. 1 cannot bear it! It must not stare me in the
face!”

"Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” said
Hepzibah, soothingly. "There is a crimson curtain in
a trunk above stairs, — a little faded and moth-eaten,
I*m afraid, — but Phoebe and I will do wonders with it.”

"This very day, remember!” said he; and then added,
in a low, self-communing voice, " Why should we live in
this dismal house at all? Why not go to the South of
France ? — to Italy ? — Paris, Naples, Venice. Rome ?
Hepzibah will say we have not the means. A droll idea
that!” ,

He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic
meaning towards Hepzibah.

But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were
marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so

THE GUEST

125

brief an interval of time, had evidently wearied the stran¬
ger. He was probably accustomed to a sad monotony of
life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish,
as stagnating in a pool around his feet. A slumberous
vreil diffused itself over his countenance, and had an effect,
morally speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant
outline, like that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine
in it, throws over the features of a landscape. He ap¬
peared to become grosser, — almost cloddish. If aught
of interest or beauty — even ruined beauty — had here¬
tofore been visible in this man, the beholder might now
begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own imagination of
deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that
visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those
filmy eyes.

Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp
and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible.
Striking most disagreeably on Clifford’s auditory organs
and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused
him to start upright out of his chair.

“ Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance
have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking his resent¬
ful impatience — as a matter of course, and a custom of
old — on the one person in the world that loved him.
“ I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you
permit it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it
be?”

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief —
even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its can¬
vas — Clifford’s character was thrown by this apparently
trifling annoyance. The secret was, that an individual
of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through

126 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through
his heart. It is even possible — for similar cases have
often happened — that if Clifford, in his foregoing life,
had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste to its utmost
perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this
period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affec¬
tions. Shall wc venture to pronounce, therefore, that his
long and black calamity may not have had a redeeming
drop of mercy at the bottom ?

"Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from
your ears,” said Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with
a painful suffusion of shame. “It is very disagreeable
even to me. Hut, do you know, Clifford, I have some¬
thing to tell you ? This ugly noise, — i)ray run, Phoebe,
and see who is there ! — this naughty little tinkle is noth¬
ing but our shop-bell!”

“ Shop-bell! ” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.

“Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain natural
dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself
in her manner. “For you must know, dearest Clifford,
that we are very poor. And there was no other resource,
but cither to accept assistance from a hand that I would
push aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when
we were dying for it, — no help, save from him, or else to
earn our subsistence with my own hands ! Alone, I might
have been content to starve. But you were to be given
back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added
she, with a wretched smile, “ that I have brought an irre¬
trievable disgrace on fhe old house, by opening a little
shop in the front gable ? Our great-great-grandfather did
the same, when there was far less need I Are you ashamed
of me?”

THE GUEST

127

"Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to
me, Hepzibah?” said Clifford, — not angrily, however;
for when a man’s spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he
may be peevish at small offences, but never resentful of
great ones. So he spoke with only a grieved emotion.
" It was not kind to say so, Hepzibah I What shame can
befall me now?”

And then the unnerved man — he that had been born
for enjoyment, but had met a doom so very wretched —
burst into a woman’s passion of tears. It was but of brief
continuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent,
and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable
state. From this mood, too, he partially rallied for an
instant, and looked at Hepzibah with a smile, the keen
half-derisory purport of which was a puzzle to her.

"Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?” said he.

Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clif¬
ford fell asleep. Hearing the more regular rise and fall of
his breath (which, however, even then, instead of being
strong and full, had a feeble kind of tremor, corresponding
with the lack of vigor in his character), — hearing these
tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized the opportunity
to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet dared
to do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest
spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpres¬
sibly sad. In this depth of grief and pity she felt that
there was no irreverence in gazing at his altered, aged,
faded, ruined face. But no sooner was she a little relieved
than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously at him,
now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away,
Hepzibah let down the curtain over the sunny window,
and left Clifford to slumber there.

VIII

THE PTNCHEON OF TO-DAY

Phcebe, on entering the shopi beheld there the already
familiar face of the little devourer — if we can reckon hia
mighty deeds aright — of Jim Crow, the elephant, the
camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having ex¬
pended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in
the purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young
gentleman’s present errand was on the part of his mother,
in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins. These
articles Phcebe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of
gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-
added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a
whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the
prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down
the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan
had preceded him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was
the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of
his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because
be, as well as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation,
looked almost as youthful as if he had been jusf that
moment made.

After partly closing the door, the child turned back,
and mumbled somet^ng to Phcebe, which, as the whale
was but half disposed of, she could not perfectly under¬
stand.

"What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she.

128

The House of the Seven Gables.

This view shows the large flat stones used for paving the walks*

THE PYNCHBON OF TO-DAY

129

"Mother wants to know/’ repeated Ned Higgins, more
distinctly, "how Old Maid Pyncheon’s brother does?
Folks say he has got home.”

"My cousin Hepzibah’s brother!” exclaimed Phoebe,
surprised at this sudden explanation of the relationship
between Hepzibah and her guest. “Her brother! And
where can he have been?”

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-
nose, with that look of shrewdness which a child, spend¬
ing much of his time in the street, so soon learns to throw
over his features, however unintelligent in themselves.
Then as Phoebe continued to gaze at him, without answer¬
ing his mother’s message, he took his departure.

As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended
them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was
the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little
more height, would have been the stately figure of a man
considerably in tlie decline of life, dressed in a black suit
of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as
possible. A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood,
added materially to the high respectability of his aspect, as
did also a neckcloth of the utmost snowy purity, and the
conscientious polish of his boots. His dark, square
countenance, with its almost shaggy depth of eyebrows,
was naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been
rather stern, had not the gentleman considerately taken
upon himself to mitigate the harsh effect by a look of ex¬
ceeding good-humor and benevolence. Owing, however,
to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance
about the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps,
unctuous, rather than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a
kind of fleshly effulgence, not altogether so satisfactory

130 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

as he doubtless intended it to be. A susceptible observer,
at any rate, might have regarded it as affording very little
evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof it pur¬
ported to be the outward reflection. And if the observer
chanced to be ill-natured, as well as acute and susceptible,
he would probably suspect that the smile on the gentle¬
man’s face was a good deal akin to the shine on his boots,
and that each must have cost him and his boot-black,
respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and
preserve them.

As the stranger entered the little shop, where the pro¬
jection of the second story and the thick foliage of the elm-
tree, as well as the commodities at the window, created
a sort of gray medium, his smile grew as intense as if he
had set his heart on counteracting the whole gloom of the
atmosphere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hep-
zibah and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his coun¬
tenance. On perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, a look
of surprise was manifest. He at first knit his brows;
then smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever.

“Ah, I see how it is!” said he, in a deep voice, — a
voice which, had it come from the throat of an uncul¬
tivated man, would have been gruff, but, by dint of care¬
ful training, was now sufficiently agreeable, — “I was not
aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced
business under such favorable auspices. You are her
assistant, 1 suppose?”

“I certainly am,” answered Phcebe, and added, with a
little air of lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentle¬
man was, he evidently took her to be a young person
serving for wages), “ 1 am a cousin of Miss Hepzibah, on
a visit to her.”

THE PYNCHEON OP TO-DAY

131

"Her cousin? — and from the country? Pray pardon
mcj then/’ said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as
Phoebe never had been bowed to nor smiled on before;
“ in that case, we must be better acquainted; for, unless
I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman
likewise I Let me see, — Mary ? — Dolly ? — Phoebe ?
— yes, Phoebe is the name 1 Is it possible that you are
Phoebe Pyncheon, only child of my dear cousin and class¬
mate, Arthur? Ah, I see your father now, about your
mouth! Yes, yes! we must be better acquainted! I am
your kinsman, my dear. Surely you must have heard of
Judge Pyncheon ? ”

As Phoebe courtesied in reply, the Judge bent forward,
with the pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose —
considering the nearness of blood, and tlie difference of
age — of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of acknowl¬
edged kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately
(without design, or only with such instinctive design as
gives no account of itself to the intellect) Phoebe, just at
the critical moment, drew back; so that her highly re¬
spectable kinsman, with his body bent over the counter,
and his lips protruded, was betrayed into the rather absurd
predicament of kissing the empty air. It was a modern
parallel to the case of lx ion embracing a cloud, and was so
much the more ridiculous, as the Judge prided himself on
eschewing all airy matter, and never mistaking a shadow
for a substance. The truth was, — and it is Pheebe’s
only excuse, — that, although Judge Pyncheon’s glowing
benignity might not be absolutely unpleasant to the fem¬
inine beholder, with the width of a street, or even an or-
dinaiy-sized room, interposed between, yet it became quite
too intense, when this dark, full-fed physiognomy (so

132 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever make it
smooth) sought to bring itself into actual contact with the
object of its regards. The man, the sex, somehow or other,
was entirely too prominent in the Judge’s demonstrations
of that sort. Phoebe’s eyes sank, and, without knowing
why, she felt herself blushing deeply under his look. Yet
she had been kissed before, and without any particular
squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different cousins,
younger as well as older than this dark-browed, grisly-
bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent
Judge! Then, why not by him ?

On raising her eyes, Phoebe was startled by the change
in Judge Pyncheon's face. It was quite as striking, al¬
lowing for the difference of scale, as that betwixt a land¬
scape under a broad sunshine and just before a thunder¬
storm; not that it had the passionate intensity of the
latter aspect, but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day^
long brooding cloud.

“ Dear me! what is to be done now ?” thought the coun¬
try-girl to herself. "He looks as if there were nothing
softer in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind I
1 meant no harm! Since he is really my cousin, 1 would
have let him kiss me, if I could!”

Then, all at once, it struck Phoebe that this very Judge
Pyncheon was the original of the miniature which the
daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that
the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the
same that the sun*had so inflexibly persisted in bringing
out. Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, how¬
ever skilfully concealed, the settled temper of his life?
And not merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and trans^
mitted down^ as a precious heirloom, from that bearded

THE PYNCHEON OP TO-DAY

133

ancestor, in whose picture both the expression, and, to a
singular degree, the features of the modern Judge were
shown as by a kind of prophecy? A deeper philosopher
than Phoebe might have found something very terrible in
this idea. It implied that the weaknesses and defects,
the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral dis¬
eases which lead to crime are handed down from one gen¬
eration to another, by a far surer process of transmission
than human law has been able to establish in respect to
the riches and honors which it seeks to entail upon pos¬
terity.

But, as it happened, scarcely had Phoebe's eyes rested
again on the Judge's countenance than all its ugly stern¬
ness vanished; and she found herself quite overpowered
by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence,
which this excellent man diffused out of his great heart
into the surrounding atmosphere, — very much like a
serpent, which, as a preliminary to fascination, is said to
fill the air with his peculiar odor.

"I like that, Cousin Phoebe!" cried he, with an em¬
phatic nod of approbation. “I like it much, ray little
cousin I You are a good child, and know how to take care
of yourself. A young girl — especially if she be a very
pretty one — can never be too chary of her lips."

“Indeed, sir," said Phoebe, trying to laugh the matter
off, “I did not mean to be unkind."

Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to
the inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance,
she still acted under a certain reserve, which was by no
means customary to her frank and genial nature. The
fantasy would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of
whom she had heard so many sombre traditions, — the

134 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

progenitor of the whole race of New England Pyncheons,
the founder of the House of the Seven Gables, and who
had died so strangely in it, — had now stept into the shop.
In these days of off-hand equipment, the matter was easily
enough arranged. On his arrival from the other world,
he had merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an
hour at a barber’s, who had trimmed down the Puritan’s
full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then, patron¬
izing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had ex¬
changed his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly
worked band under his chin, for a white collar and cravat,
coat, vest, and pantaloons; and lastly, putting aside his
steel-hilted broadsword to take up a gold-headed cane,
the Colonel Pyncheon of t'^vo centuries ago steps forward
as the Judge of the passing moment!

Of course, Phoebe was far too sensible a girl to enter¬
tain this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile
Possibly, also, could the two personages have stood to¬
gether before her eye, many points of difference would
have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general resem¬
blance. The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate
so unlike that which had fostered the ancestral English¬
man, must inevitably have wrought important changes in
the physical system of his descendant. The Judge’s
volume of muscle could hardly be the same as the Colo¬
nel’s ; there was undoubtedly less beef in Jiirn. Though
looked upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries
in respect of animal substance, and as favored with a re¬
markable degree of fundamental development, well adapt¬
ing him for the judicial bench, we conceive that the
modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance
with his ancestor, would have required at least an old-

THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY

135

fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio. Then the
Judge’s face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed
its warmth through all the duskiness of the Colonel's
weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the
established complexion of his country-men. If we mis¬
take not, moreover, a certain quality of nervousness had
become more or less manifest, even in so solid a specimen
of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under discussion.
As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a
•quicker mobility than the old Englishman’s had possessed,
<and keener vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier some¬
thing, on which these acute endowments seemed to act
like dissolving acids. This process, for aught we know,
may belong to the great system of human progress, which,
with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the neces¬
sity for-animal force, may be destined gradually to spirit¬
ualize us, by refining away our grosser attributes of body.
If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century or two more
of such refinement as well as most other men.

The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the
Judge and his ancestor appears to have been at least as
strong as the resemblance of mien and feature would afford
reason to anticipate. In old Colonel Pyncheon’s funeral
discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased
parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the
roof of the church, and thence through the firmament above,
showed him seated, harp in hand, among the crowned
choristers of the spiritual world. On his tombstone, too,
the record is highly eulogistic; nor does history, so far as
ne holds a place upon its page, assail the consistency and
Uurightness of his character. So also, as regards the Judge
pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic,

136 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

nor inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or
local politics, would venture a word against this eminent
person’s sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man,
or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the
often-tried representative of his political party. But,
besides these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel
that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that
writes, for the public eye and for distant time, — and which
inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the
fatal consciousness of so doing, — there were traditions
about the ancestor, and private diurnal gossip about the
Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony. It is
often instructive to take the woman’s, the private and do¬
mestic, view of a public man; nor can anything be more
curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits in¬
tended for engraving and the pencil-sketches that pass
from hand to hand behind the original’s back.

For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan had
been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show
of liberal expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if
his gripe were of iron. The ancestor had clothed himself
in a grim assumption of kindliness, a rough heartiness of
word and manner, which most people took to be the gen¬
uine warmth of nature, making its way through the thick
and inflexible hide of a manly character. His descendant,
in compliance witli the requirements of a nicer age, had
etherealized this rude benevolence into that broad benig¬
nity of smile, wherewith he shone like a noonday sun along
the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the drawing¬
rooms of his private acquaintance. The Puritan — if not
belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this
day, under the narrator’s breath — had fallen into cer-^

THE PTNCHEON OF TO-DAY

137

tain transgressions to which men of his great animal
development, whatever their faith or principles, must con¬
tinue liable, until they put off impurity, along with the
gross earthly substance that involves it. We must not
stain our page with any contemporary scandal, to a similar
purport, that may have been whispered against the Judge.
The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own household, had
worn out three wives, arid, merely by the remorseless
weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal re¬
lation, had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted,
to their graves. Here the parallel, in some sort, fails.
The Judge had wedded but a single wife, and lost her in
the third or fourth year of their marriage. There was a
fable, however, — for such we choose to consider it,
though, not impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon’s mar¬
ital deportment, — that the lady got her death-blow in
the honeymoon, and never smiled again, because her hus¬
band compelled her to serve him with coffee every morn^
ing at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and
master.

But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary re¬
semblances, — the frequent recurrence of which, in a di¬
rect line, is truly unaccountable, when we consider how
large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man
at the distance of one or two centuries. We shall only
add, therefore, that the Puritan — so, at least, says chim¬
ney-corner tradition, which often preserves traits of char¬
acter with marvellous fidelity — was bold, imperious,
relentless, crafty; laying his purposes deep, and following
them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither
rest nor conscience: trampling on the weak, and, when
essential to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the

138 ' THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

strong. Whether the Judge in any degree resembled
him the further progress of our narrative may show.

Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel
occurred to Phcebe, whose country birth and residence,
in truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the fam¬
ily traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrus¬
tations of smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners
of the House of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a cir¬
cumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with
an odd degree of horror. She had heard of the anathema
flung by Maule, the executed wizard, against Colonel Pyn-
cheon and his posterity, — that God would give them
blood to drink, — and likewise of the popular notion, that
this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gur¬
gling in their throats. The latter scandal — as became a
person of sense, and, more especially, a member of the
Pyncheon family — Phoebe had set down for the absurd¬
ity which it unquestionably was. But ancient supersti¬
tions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied
in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in mani¬
fold repetition, through a series of generations, become
imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of the
domestic hearth had scented them through and through.
By long transmission among household facts, they grow
to look like them, and have such a familiar way of making
themselves at home that their influence is usually greater
than we suspect. Thus it happened, that when Phcebe
heard a certain noise in Judge Pynoheon’s throat, —
rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet
indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial com¬
plaint, or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,
— when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgi-

THE PYNCHEON OP TO-DAY

139

tation (which the writer never did hear, and therefore can¬
not describe), she, very foolishly, started, and clasped
her hands.

Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phoebe to be
discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpardonable
to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned
in it. But the incident chimed in so oddly with her pre¬
vious fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that, for
the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.

“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said
Judge Fyncheon, giving her one of his harsh looks. “Are
you afraid of anything?”

“Oh, nothing, sir,—nothing in the world!” answered
Phoebe, with a little laugh of vexation at herself. “But
perhaps you wish to speak with my cousin Hepzibah.
Shall I call her?”

“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the Judge, again
beaming sunshine out of his face. “You seem to be a
little nervous this morning. The town air. Cousin Phoebe,
does not agree with your good, wholesome country habits.
Or has anything happened to disturb you ? — anything
remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah’s family ? — An arrival,
eh ? I thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my
little cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well
startle an innocent young girl! ”

“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phoebe, gazing in¬
quiringly at the Judge. “There is no frightful guest in
the house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike man whom I
believe to be Cousin Hepzibah’s brother. I am afraid
(but you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite
in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be,
that a mother might trust her baby with him; and I t hi nk

140 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

he would play with the baby as if he were only a few years
older than itself. He startle me! — Oh, no indeed!

“ I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an ac¬
count of my cousin Clifford,’’ said the benevolent Judge.
"Many years ago, when we were boys and young men to¬
gether, I had a great affection for him, and still feel a ten¬
der interest in all his concerns. You, say. Cousin Phoebe,
he appears to be weak-minded. Heaven grant him at
least enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!”

"Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phoebe, “can have fewer
to repent of.”

“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the Judge, with
a commiserating look, "that you have never heard of
Clifford Pyncheon ? — tha t you know nothing of his his¬
tory ? Well, it is all right; and your mother has shown
a very proper regard for the good name of the family with
which she connected herself. Believe the best you can of
this unfortunate person, and hope the best! It is a rule
which Christians should always follow, in their judgments
of one another; and especially is it right and wise among
near relatives, whose characters have necessarily a degree
of mutual dependence. But is Clifford in the parlor? I
will just step in and see.”

“Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,”
said Phoebe; hardly knowing, however, whether she ought
to obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into
the private regions of the house. “Her brother seemed
to be just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure
she would not like him to be disturbed. Pray sir, let me
give her notice! ”

But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter
unannounced; and as Phoebe, with the vivacity of a

THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY

141

person whose movements unconsciously answer to her
thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used little or
no ceremony in putting her aside.

No, no. Miss Phoebe! ’* said Judge Pyncheon, in a voice
as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as
the cloud whence it issues. " Stay you here! 1 know the
house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know her
brother Clifford likewise I — nor need my little country
cousin put herself to the trouble of announcing me!” —
in these latter words, by the by, there were symptoms of
a change from his sudden harshness into his previous be¬
nignity of manner. “I am at home here, Phoebe, you
must recollect, and you are the stranger. 1 will just step
in, therefore, and see for myself how Clifford is, and assure
him and Hepzibah of my kindly feelings and best wishes.
It is right, at this juncture, that they should both hear
from my own lips how much I desire to serve them. Ha!
here is Hepzibah herself!”

Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge’s voice
had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she
sat, with face averted, waiting on her brother’s slumber.
She now issued forth, as would appear, to defend the en¬
trance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly like the
dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over
an enchanted beauty. The habitual scowl of her brow
was, undeniably, too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself
off on the innocent score of near-sightedness; and it was
bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that seemed to con¬
found, if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated
the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy. She
made a repelling gesture with her hand, and stood a per¬
fect picture of prohibition, at full length, in the dark frame

142 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

of the doorway. But we must betray Hepzibah’s secret,
and confess that the native timorousness of her character
even now developed itself in a quick tremor, which, to her
own perception, set each of her joints at variance with its
fellows.

Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood
lay behind Hepzibah’s formidable front. At any rate,
being a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered
himself, and failed not to approach his cousin with out¬
stretched hand; adopting the sensible precaution, how¬
ever, to cover his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry,
that, had it been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis
of grapes might at once have turned purple under its sum¬
mer-like exposure. It ma> have been his purpose, indeed,
to melt poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she were a figure
of yellow wax.

"Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” ex¬
claimed the Judge, most emphatically. "Now, at length,
you have something to live for. Yes, and all of us, let me
your friends and kindred, have more to live for than
we had yesterday. I have lost no time in hastening to
offer any assistance in my power towards making Clifford
comfortable. He belongs to us all. I know how much
he requires, — how much he used to require, — with his
delicate taste, and his love of the beautiful. Anything in
my house, — pictures, books, wine, luxuries of the table,
— he mav command them all! It voiild afford m ^ most

Ir

heartfelt gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this
moment?”

" No,** replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too pain¬
fully to allow of many words. "He cannot see visit¬
ors!**

THE PYNCHEON OP TO-DAY

143

"A visitor, my dear cousin! — do you call me so?”
cried the Judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by
the coldness of the phrase. “Nay, then, let me be Clif¬
ford’s host, and your own likewise. Come at once to my
house. The country air, and all the conveniences — I
may say luxuries — that I have gathered about me, will
do wonders for him. And you and I, dear Hepzibah, will
consult together, and watch together, and labor together,
to make our dear Clifford happy. Come I why should we
make more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure
on my part? Come to me at once 1”

On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such gener¬
ous recognition of the claims of kindred, Phcebe felt very
much in the mood of running up to Judge Pyncheon, and
giving him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had
so recently shrunk away. It was quite otherwise with
Hepzibah; the Judge’s smile seemed to operate on her
acerbity of heart like sunshine upon v^inegar, making it
ten times sourer than ever.

“ Clifford,” said she, — still too agitated to utter more
than an abrupt sentence, — “ Clifford has a home
here!”

“May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge
Pynclieon, — reverently lifting his eyes towards that high
court of equity to which he appealed, — “if you suffer any
ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this
matter! I stand here with an open heart, willing and anx¬
ious to receive yourself and Clifford into it. Do not re¬
fuse my good offices, — my earnest propositions for your
welfare! They are such, in all respects, as it behooves
your nearest kinsman to make. It will be a heavy
responsibility, cousin, if you confine your brother to this

144 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLEls

dismal house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom
of my country-seat is at his command.”

"It would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as
briefly as before.

“Woman!” broke forth the Judge, giving way to his
resentment, “ what is the meaning of all this ? Have you
other resources ? Nay, I suspected as much! Take care,
Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as black
a ruin as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you,
woman as you are ? Make way I — I must see Clifford!”

Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door,
and seemed really to increase in bulk; looking the more
terrible, also, because there was so much terror and agita¬
tion in her heart. But Jmlge Pyncheon’s evident purpose
of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from the
inner room; a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating
helpless alarm, with no more energy for self-defence than
belongs to a frightened infant.

“Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “go down
on your knees to him ! Kiss his feet! Entreat him not
to come in! Oh, let him have mercy on me I Mercy! —
mercy! ”

For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were
not the Judge’s resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside,
and step across the threshold into the parlor, whence is¬
sued that broken and miserable murmur of entreaty. It
was not pity that restrained him, for, at the first snund of
the enfeebled voic^ a red fire kindled m his eyes, and he
made a quick pace forward, with something inexpressibly
fierce and grim darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole
man. To know Judge Pyncheon, was to see him at that
moment. After such a revelation, let him smile with what

THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY

145

sultriness he would, he could much sooner turn grapes
purple, or pumpkins yellow^ than melt the iron-branded
impression out of the beholder’s memory. And it ren¬
dered his aspect not the less, but more frightful, that it
seemed not to express wrath or hatred, but a certain hot
fellness of purpose, which annihilated everything but it¬
self.

Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and
amiable man? Look at the Judge now! He is appar¬
ently conscious of having erred, in too energetically press¬
ing his deeds of loving-kindness on persons unable to ap¬
preciate them. He will await their better mood, and hold
himself as ready to assist them then as at this moment.
As he draws back from the door, an all-comprehensive be¬
nignity blazes from his visage, indicating that he gathers
Hepzibah, little Phcebe, and the invisible Clifford, all three,
together with the whole world besides, into his immense
heart, and gives them a warm bath in its flood of af¬
fection.

“You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!”
said he, first kindly offering her his hand, and then draw¬
ing on his glove preparatory to departure. “Very great
wrong 1 Hut I forgive it, and will study to make you think
better of me. Of course, our poor Clifford being in so un-
happy a state of mind, I cannot think of urging an inter¬
view at present. But 1 shall watch over his welfare as if
he were my own beloved brother; nor do I at all despair,
my dear cousin, of constraining both him and you to ac¬
knowledge your injustice. When that shall happen, 1 de¬
sire no other revenge than your acceptance of the best
offices in my power to do you. ”

With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal be-

146 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

nevolence in his parting nod to Phoebe, the Judge left the
shop, and went smiling along the street. As is customary
with the rich, when they aim at the honors of a republic,
he apologized, as it were, to the people, for his wealth,
prosperity, and elevated station, by a free and hearty man¬
ner towards those who knew him; putting off the more of
his dignity in due proportion with the humbleness of the
man whom he saluted, and thereby proving a haughty
consciousness of his advantages as irrcfragably as if he had
marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the
way. On this particular forenoon so excessive was the
warmth of Judge Pyncheon’s kindly aspect, that (such,
at least, was the rumor about town) an extra passage of
the water-carts was found essential, in order to lay the
dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine!

No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew
deadly white, and, staggering towards Phoebe, let her
head fall on the young girl’s shoulder.

“ O Phoebe! ” murmured she, " that man has been the
horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the courage,
— will my voice never cease from trembling long enough
to let me tell him what he is ? ”

“ Is he so very wicked ? ” asked Phoebe. “ Yet his of¬
fers were surely kind 1 ”

“ Do not speak of them, — he has a heart of iron! ” re¬
joined Hepzibah. “ Go, now, and talk to Clifford ! Amuse
and keep him quiet! It would disturb him wretchedly to
see me so agitated as I am. There, go, dear child, and I
will try to look after the shop.”

Phoebe went, accordingly, but perplexed herself, mean¬
while, with queries as to the purport of the scene which she
had just witnessed, and also whether judges, clergymen,

THE PYNCHEON OP TO-DAY

147

and other characters of that eminent stamp and respect¬
ability, could really, in any single instance, be otherwise
than just and upright men. A doubt of this nature has
a most disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact,
comes with fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim,
orderly, and limit-loving class, in which we find our little
country-girl. Dispositions more boldly speculative may
derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, since there
must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to
grasp his share of it as a low one. A wider scope of view,
and a deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station,
all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to human
reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby
tumbled headlong into chaos. But Phoebe, in order to
keep the universe in its old place, was fain to smother, in
some'degree, her own intuitions as to Judge Pyncheon’s
character. And as for her cousin’s testimony in dispar^*
agement of it, she concluded that Hepzibah’s judgment
was imbittered by one of those family feuds, which render
hatred the more deadly by the dead and corrupted love
that they intermingle with its native poison.

IX

CLIFFORD AND PHCEBE

Truly was there something high, generous, and noble
in the native composition of our poor old Hepzibah I Or
else, — and it was quite as probably the case, — she had
been enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated
by the strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus
endowed with heroism, which never could have char¬
acterized her in what arc called happier circumstances.
Through dreary years Hepzibah had looked forward —
for the most part despairingly, never with any confidence
of hope, but always with the feeling that it was her bright¬
est possibility — to the very position in which she now
found herself. In her own behalf, she had asked nothing
of Providence but the opportunity of devoting herself to
this brother, whom she had so loved, — so admired for
what he was, or might have been, — and to whom she had
kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, unfalteringly,
at every instant, and throughout life. And here, in his
late decline, the lost one had come back out of his long and
strange misfortune, and was thrown on her sympathy, as
it seemed, not merely for the bread of his physic^d exist¬
ence, but for everything that should keep him morally
alive. She had responded to the call. She had come for¬
ward, — our poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with
her rigid joints, and the sad perversity of her scowl, —
ready to do her utmost; and with affection enough, if

148

Hawthorne’s Cane, Sandbox, Stencil, Inkwell, Quill, and Sheet of Manuscript

ui THE House of the Seven Cables

CLIFFORD AND PHOSBE

149

that were all, to do a hundred times as much! There
could be few more tearful sights, — and Heaven forgive
us if a smile insist on mingling with our conception of it 1
— few sights with truer pathos in them, than Hepzibah
presented on that first afternoon.

How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in
her great, warm love, and make it all the world to him, so
that he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness
and dreariness without! Her little efforts to amuse him 1
How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!

Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she
unlocked a bookcase, and took down several books that
had been excellent reading in their day. There was a vol¬
ume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in it, and another
of the Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden’s Miscellanies,
all with tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of
tarnished brilliancy inside. They had no success with
Clifford. These, and all such writers of society, whose
new works glow like the rich texture of a just-woven car¬
pet, must be content to relinquish their charm, for every
reader, after an age or two, and could hardly be supposed
to retain any portion of it for a mind that had utterly lost
its estimate of modes and manners. Hepzibah then took
up Rasselas, and began to read of the Happy Valley, with
a vague idea that some secret of a contented life had there
been elaborated, which might at least serve Clifford and
herself for this one day. But the Happy Valley had a
cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover,
by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to de¬
tect, without any reference to the meaning; nor, in fact,
did he appear to take much note of the sense of what she
read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without

150 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

harvesting its profit. His sister’s voice, too, naturally
harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, con¬
tracted a kind of croak, which, when it once gets into
the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both
sexes, occasionally, this life-long croak, accompanying
each word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a
settled melancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole
history of misfortune is conveyed in its slightest accent.
The effect is as if the voice had been dyed black; or, — if
we must use a more moderate simile, — this miserable
croak, running through all the variations of the voice, is
like a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of
speech are strung, and whence they take their hue.
Such voices have put on mourning for dead hopes; and
they ought to die and be buried along with them!

Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her ef¬
forts, Hepzibah searched about the house for the means of
more exhilarating pastime. At one time, her eyes chanced
to rest on Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. It was a mo¬
ment of great peril; for, — despite the traditionary awe
that had gathered over this instrument of music, and the
dirges which spiritual fingers were said to play on it, —
the devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming
on its chords for Clifford’s benefit, and accompanying the
performance with her voice. Poor Clifford I Poor Hep¬
zibah I Poor harpsichord! All three would have been
miserable together. By some good agency, — pos^iibly,
by the unrecognized interposition of the long-buried Alice
herself, — the threatening calamity was averted.

But the worst of all — the hardest stroke of fate for
Hepzibah to endure, and perhaps for Clifford too — was
his invincible distaste for her appearance. Her features,

CLIFFORD AND PHCEBB

151

never the most agreeable, and now harsh with age and
grief, and resentment against the world for his sake; her
dress, and especially her turban; the queer and quaint
manners, which had unconsciously grown upon her in sol¬
itude, — such being the poor gentlewoman’s outward
characteristics, it is no great marvel, although the mourn-
fullest of pities, that the instinctive lover of the Beautiful
was fain to turn away his eyes. There was no help for it.
It would be the latest impulse to die within him. In his
last extremity, the expiring breath stealing faintly through
Clifford’s lips, he would doubtless press Hepzibah’s hand,
in fervent recognition of all her lavished love, and close
his eyes, — but not so much to die, as to be constrained
to look no longer on her face I Poor Hcpzibah! She took
counsel with herself what might be done, and thought of
puttingTibbons on her turban; but, by the instant rush of
several guardian angels, was withheld from an experiment
that could hardly have proved less than fatal to the be'
loved object of her anxiety.

To be brief, besides Hepzibah’s disadvantages of per¬
son, there was an uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a
clumsy something, that could but ill adapt itself for use,
and not at all for ornament. She was a grief to Clifford,
and she knew it. In this extremity, the antiquated vir¬
gin turned to Phoebe. No grovelling jealousy was in her
heart. Had it pleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidel¬
ity of her life by making her personally the medium of
Clifford’s happiness, it would have rewarded her for all the
past, by a joy with no bright tints, indeed, but deep
and true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies. This
could not be. She therefore turned to Phoebe, and re¬
signed the task into the young girl’s hands. The latter

152 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

took it up cheerfully, as she did everything, but with no
sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all the better
for that same simplicity.

By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament,
Phcebe soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily
comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn compan*
ions. The grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven
Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance
there; the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among
the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased
to settle down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon
the floors and furniture of the rooms below, — or, at any
rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed as tht
breeze that sweeps a gardon walk, gliding hither and
thither to brush it all away. The shadows of gloomy
events that haunted the else lonely and desolate apart¬
ments ; the heavy, breathless scent which death had left in
more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his visits of
long ago, — these were less powerful than the purifying
influence scattered throughout the atmosphere of the
household by the presence of one youthful, fresh, and thor¬
oughly wholesome heart. There was no morbidness in
Fhcebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was
the very locality to ripen it into incurable disease. But
now her spirit resembled, in its potency, a minute quantity
of ottar of rose in one of Hepzibah^s huge, iron-bound
trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the various a ’ticles
of linen and wrought^lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded
dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured there.
As every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the
rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hep-
sibah and Clifford, sombre as they might seem, acquire a

CLIFFORD AND PHCEBE

153

subtle attribute of happiness from Phoebe’s intermixture
with them. Her activity of body, intellect, and heart
impelled her continually to perform the ordinary little toils
that offered themselves around her, and to think the
thought proper for the moment, and to sympathize,—
now with the twittering gayety of the robins in the pear-
tree, and now to such a depth as she could with Hep-
zibah’s dark anxiety, or the vague moan of her brother.
This facile adaptation was at once the symptom of perfect
health and its best preservative.

A nature like Phcebe’s has invariably its due influence,
but is seldom regarded with due honor. Its spiritual
force, however, may be partially estimated by the fact
of her having found a place for herself, amid circumstances
so stern as those which surrounded the mistress of the
house; .and also by the effect which she produced on a
character of so much more mass than her own. For the
gaunt, bony frame and limbs of Hepzihah, as compared
with the tiny lightsomeness of Pheebe’s figure, were per¬
haps in some fit proportion with the moral weight and sub¬
stance, respectively, of the woman and the girl.

To the guest, — to Hepzihah’s brother,—or Cousin
Clifford, as Phoebe now began to call him, — she was es¬
pecially necessary. Not that he could ever be said to con¬
verse with her, or often manifest, in any other very def¬
inite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she
were a long while absent he became pettish and nerx'ously
restless, pacing the room to and fro with the uncertainty
that characterized all his movements; or else would sit
broodingly in his great chair, resting his head on his hands,
and evincing life only by an electric sparkle of ill-humor,
whenever Hepzihah endeavored to arouse him. Phoebe’s

154 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

presence, and the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted
one, was usually all that he required. Indeed, such was
the native gush and play of her spirit, that she was seldom
perfectly quiet and undemonstrative, any more than a
fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with its flow.
She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally,
that you would as little think of inquiring whence she had
caught it, or what master had taught her, as of asking the
fiame questions about a bird, in whose small strain of music
we recognize the voice of the Creator as distinctly as in the
loudest accents of his thunder. So long as Phoebe sang,
she might stray at her own will about the house. Clif¬
ford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of
her tones came down from tUe upper chambers, or along
the passageway from the shop, or was sprinkled through
the foliage of the pear-tree, inward from the garden, with
the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly, with a
gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, and
now a little dimmer, as the song happened to float near
him, or was more remotely heard. It pleased him best,
however, when she sat on a low footstool at his knee.

It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament,
that Phoebe oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety.
But the young and happy are not ill-pleased to temper
their life with a transparent shadow. The deepest pathos
of Phoebe’s voice and song, moreover, came sifted thi-ough
the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was someh'^ w so
interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one’s
heart felt all the lighter for having wept at it. Broad
mirth, in the sacred presence of dark misfortune, would
have jarred harshly and irreverently with the solemn sym¬
phony that rolled its undertone through Hepzibah’s and

GUFFORD AND PHCEBE

155

her brother’s life. Therefore, it was well that Phcebe so
often chose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to
be so sad while she was singing them.

Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clifford
readily showed how capable of imbibing pleasant tints and
gleams of cheerful light from all quarters his nature must
originally have been. He grew youthful while she sat by
him. A beauty, — not precisely real, even in its utmost
manifestation, and which a painter would have watched
long to seize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain,
— beauty, nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would
sometimes play upon and illuminate his face. It did more
than to illuminate; it transfigured him with an expres¬
sion that could only be interpreted as the glow of an ex¬
quisite and happy spirit. That gray hair, and those
furrows, — with their record of infinite sorrow so deeply
written across his brow, and so compressed, as with a
futile effort to crowd in all the tale, that the whole in¬
scription was made illegible, — these, for the moment,
vanished. An eye, at once tender and acute, might have
beheld in the man some shadow of what he was meant
to be. Anon, as age came stealing, like a sad twilight,
back over his figure, you would have felt tempted to hold
an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that either this
being should not have been made mortal, or mortal ex¬
istence should have been tempered to his qualities. There
seemed no necessity for his having drawn breath at all;
the world never wanted him; but, as he breathed, it
ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air.
The same perplexity will invariably haunt us with regard
to natures that tried to feed exclusively upon the Beau¬
tiful, let their earthly fate be as lenient as it may.

156 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Phoebe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect com¬
prehension of the character over which she had thrown
so beneficent a spell. Nor was it necessary. The fire
upon the hearth can gladden a whole semi-circle of faces
round about it, but need not know the individuality of
one among them all. Indeed, there was something too
fine and delicate in Clifford’s traits to be perfectly appre¬
ciated by one whose sphere lay so much in the Actual as
Phoebe’s did. For Clifford, however, the reality, and
simplicity, and thorough homeliness of the girl’s nature,
were as powerful a charm as any that she possessed.
Beauty, it is true, and beauty almost perfect in its own
style, was indispensable. Had Phoebe been coarse in
feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice, and uncouthly
mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts,
beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she
wore the guise of woman, she would have shocked Clifford,
and depressed him by her lack of beauty. But nothing
more beautiful — nothing prettier, at least — was ever
made than Phoebe. And, therefore, to this man, —
whose whole poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence
heretofore, and until both his heart and fancy died within
him, had been a dream, — whose images of women had
more and more lost their warmth and substance, and been
frozen, like the pictures of secluded artists, into the chill-
est ideality, — to him, this little figure of the cheeriest
household life was just what he required to bring him back
into the breathing wo^ld. Persons who have wandered,
or been expelled, out of the common track of things,
even were it for a better system, desire nothing so much
as to be led back. They shiver in their loneliness, be it
on a mountain-top or in a dungeon. Now, Phoebe’s preS"

CLIFFORD AND PH(BBB

157

ence made a home about her, — that very sphere which
the outcast, the prisoner, the potentate, — the wretch
beneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the wretch
above it, — instinctively pines after, — a home! She
was real! Holding her hand, you felt something; a ten¬
der something; a substance, and a warm one: and so
long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might
be certain that your place was good in the whole sympa¬
thetic chain of human nature. The world was no longer
a delusion.

By looking a little further in this direction, we might
suggest an explanation of an often-suggested mystery.
Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any
similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which
might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman
as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit ? Be¬
cause, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs
no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend,
and be a stranger.

There was something very beautiful in the relation that
grew up between this pair, so closely and constantly linked
together, yet with such a waste of gloomy and mysterious
years from his birthday to hers. On Clifford’s part it
was the feeling of a man naturally endowed with the live¬
liest sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never
quaffed the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was
now too late. He knew it, with the instinctive delicacy
that had survived his intellectual decay. Thus, his sen¬
timent for Phcebe, without being paternal, was not less
chaste than if she had been his daughter. He w'as a man,
it is true, and recognized her as a woman. She was his
only representative of womankind. He took unfail-

158 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

ing note of every charm that appertained to her sex, and
saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal develop¬
ment of her bosom. All her little womanly ways, bud¬
ding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit tree, had
their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart
to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure. At such mo"
ments, — for the effect was seldom more than moment
tary, — the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious
life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the
musician’s fingers sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed
rather a perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment be¬
longing to himself as an individual. He read Phoebe, as
he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her, as
if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in re¬
quital of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some
angel, that most pitied him to warble through the house.
She was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation
of all that he had lacked on earth brought warmly home
to his conception; so that this mere symbol, or lifelike
picture, had almost the comfort of reality.

But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No
adequate expression of the beauty and profound pathos
with which it impresses us is attainable. This being,
made only for happiness, and heretofore so miserably
failing to be happy,—his tendencies so hideously thwarted,
that, some unknown time ago, the delicate springs of
his character, never morally or intellectually strong, had
given way, and he was now imbecile, — this poor, forlorn,
voyager from the Islands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on
a tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the last mountain-
wave of his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he
lay more than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of

CLIFFORD AND PH(EBE

159

an eartHy rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors
will, had summoned up reminiscences or visions of all the
living and breathing beauty amid which he should have
had his home. With his native susceptibility of happy
influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into hb
soul, and expires I

And how did Phcebe regard Clifford? The girl's was
not one of those natures which are most attracted by what
is strange and exceptional in human character. The path
which would best have suited her was the well-worn track
of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most
have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn.
The mystery which enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected
her at all, was an annoyance, rather than the piquant
charm which many women might have found in it. Still,
her native kindliness was brought strongly into play, not
by what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so
much, even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the
simple appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of
genuine sympathy' as hers. She gave him an affectionate
regard, because he needed so much love, and seemed to
have received so little. With a ready tact, the result of
ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what
was good for him, and did it. Whatever was morbid in
his mind and experience she ignored; and thereby kept
their intercourse healthy, by the incautious, but, as it were,
heaven-directed freedom of her whole conduct. The sick
in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly
and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their dis¬
ease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment
of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the
poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition. But

160 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

Phoebe afforded her poor patient a supply of purer air.
She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,—
for wildness was no trait of hers, — but with the perfume
of garden-roses, pinks, and other blossoms of much sweet¬
ness, which nature and man have consented together in
making grow from summer to summer, and from century
to century. Such a flower was Phoebe, in her relation
with Clifford, and such the delight that he inhaled from
her.

Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a
little, in consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her.
She grew more thoughtful than heretofore. Jjooking
aside at Clifford’s face, and seeing the dim, unsatisfactory
elegance and the intellect almost quenched, she would try
to inquire what had been his life. Was he always
thus? Had this veil been over him from his birth? —
this veil, under which far more of his spirit was hidden
than revealed, and through which he so imperfectly dis¬
cerned the actual world, — or was its gray texture woven
of some dark calamity? Phcebe loved no riddles, and
would have been glad to escape tlie perplexity of this one.
Nevertheless, there was so far a good result of her medi¬
tations on Clifford’s character, that, when her involuntary
conjectures, together with the tendency of every strange
circumstance to tell its own story, had gradually taught
her the fact, it had no terrible effect upon her. Lot the
world have done him what vast wrong it might, she knew
Cousin Clifford too well — or fancied so — ever to shudder
at the touch of his thin delicate fingers.

Within a few days after the appearance of this remark¬
able inmate, the routine of life had established itself with
a good deal of uniformity in the old house of our narrative.

CLIFFORD AND PH(EBE

161

In the morning, very shortly after breakfast, it was Clif¬
ford’s custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor, unless ac¬
cidentally disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud
of slumber or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro,
until well towards noonday. These hours of drowsihead
were the season of the old gentlewoman’s attendance on
her brother, while Phoebe took charge of the shop; an
arrangement which the public speedily understood, and
evinced their decided preference of the younger shop-
woman by the multiplicity of their calls during her ad¬
ministration of affairs. Dinner over, Hepzibah took her
knitting-work, — a long stocking of gray yarn, for her
brother’s winter-wear, — and with a sigh, and a scowl of
affectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture enjoining
watchfulness on Phoebe, went to take her seat behind the
counter. ’ It was now the young girl’s turn to be the nurse,
— the guardian, the playmate, — or whatever is the htter
phrase, — of the gray-haired man.

X

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

Clifford, except for Phoebe’s more active instigai
tion, would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which
had crept through all his modes of being, and which slug¬
gishly counselled him to sit in his morning chair till even¬
tide. But the girl seldom failed to propose a removal to
the garden, where Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist
had made such repairs on the roof of the ruinous arbor,
or summer-house, that it was now a sufficient shelter from
sunshine and casual showers. The hop-vine, too, had
begun to grow luxuriantly over the sides of the little edi¬
fice, and made an interior of verdant seclusion, with innu¬
merable peeps and glimpses into the wider solitude of the
garden.

Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering
light, Phcebe read to Clifford. Her acquaintance, the
artist, who appeared to have a literary turn, had supplied
her with works of fiction, in pamphlet-form, and a few
volumes of poetry, in altogether a different style and taste
from those which Hepzibah selected for his amusement.
Small thanks were due to the books, however, if the girl’s
readings were in any degree more successful than her el¬
derly cousin’s. Phcebe’s voice had always a pretty music
in it, and could either enliven Clifford by its sparkle and
gayety of tone, or soothe him by a continued flow of peb¬
bly and brook-like cadences. But the fictions — in which

162

The House op the Seven Gablb^
View from the garden*

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

163

the country-girl, unused to works of that nature, often
became deeply absorbed — interested her strange audi¬
tor very little, or not at all. Pictures of life, scenes of
passion or sentiment, wit, humor, and pathos, were all
thrown away, or worse than thrown away, on Cliiford;
either because he lacked an experience by which to test
their truth, or because his own griefs were a touchstone
of reality that few feigned emotiom could withstand.
When Phoebe broke into a peal of merry laughter at what
she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy, but
oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look. If a
tear — a maiden’s sunshiny tear over imaginary woe —
dropped upon some melancholy page, Cliiford either took
it as a token of actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and
angrily motioned her to close the volume. And wisely
too! ' Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest,
without making a pastime of mock-sorrows ?

With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in the
swell and subsidence of liie rhythm, and the happily re¬
curring rhyme. Nor was Clifford incapable of feeling the
sentiment of poetry, — not, perhaps, where it was highest
or deepest, but where it was most flitting and ethereal.
It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the
awakening spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from
the page to Clifford’s face, Phoebe would be made aware,
by the light breaking through it, that a more delicate intel¬
ligence than her own had caught a lambent flame from
what she read. One glow of this kind, however, was often
the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because,
when the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing
sense and power, and groped about for them, as if a blind
man should go seeking his lost eyesight.

164 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

It pleased him more, and was better for his inward wel¬
fare, that Phoebe should talk, and make passing occur¬
rences vivid to his mind by her accompanying description
and remarks. The life of the garden offered topics enough
for such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never failed
to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His
feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so
much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with
one in his hand, intently observing it, and looking from
its petals into Phoebe’s face, as if the garden flower were
the sister of the household maiden. Not merely was there
a delight in the flower’s perfume, or pleasure in its beau¬
tiful form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but
Clifford’s enjoyment was uccompanied with a perception
of life, character, and individuality, that made him love
these blossoms of the garden, as if they were endowed
with sentiment and intelligence. This affection and sym¬
pathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman’s trait.
Men, if endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and
learn to despise it, in their contact with coarser things
than flowers. Clifford, too, had long forgotten it; but
found it again now, as he slowly revived from the chill
torpor of his life.

It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents contin¬
ually came to pass in that secluded garden-spot when once
Phoebe had set herself to look for them. She had seen
or heard a bee there, on the first day of her acquaintance
with the place. ‘And often, — almost continually, in¬
deed, — since then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven
knows why, or by what pertinacious desire, for far-fetched
sweets, when, no doubt, there were broad clover-fields,
and all kinds of garden growth, much nearer home than

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

165

this. Thither the bees came, however, and plunged into
the squash-blossoms, as if there were no other squash-vines
within a long day’s flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah’s
garden gave its productions just the very quality which
these laborious little wizards wanted, in order to impart
the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New England
honey. When Clifford heard their sunny, buzzing mur¬
mur, in the heart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked
about him with a joyful sense of warmth, and blue sky,
and green grass, and of God’s free air in the whole height
from earth to heaven. After all, there need be no question
why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty
town. God sent them thither to gladden our poor Clif¬
ford. They brought the rich summer with them, in re¬
quital of a little honey.

When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there
was one particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blos¬
som. The daguerreotypist had found these beans in a
garret, over one of the seven gables, treasured up in an
old chest of drawers, by some horticultural Pyncheon of
days gone by, who, doubtless, meant to sow them the
next summer, but was himself first sown in Death’s gar-
den-ground. By way of testing whether there were still
a living germ in such ancient seeds, Holgrave had planted
some of them; and the result of his experiment was a
splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the full
height of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bot¬
tom, in a spiral profusion of red blossoms. And, ever
since the unfolding of the first bud, a multitude of hum¬
ming-birds had been attracted thither. At times, it
seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there
was one of these tiniest fowb of the air, — a thumb’s big-

166 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

ness of burnished plumage, hovering and vibrating about
the bean-poles. It was with indescribable interest, and
even more than childish delight, that Clifford watched the
humming-birds. He used to thrust his head softly out
of the arbor to see them the better; all the while, too, mo¬
tioning Phoebe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the
smile upon her face, so as to heap his enjoyment up the
higher with her sympathy. He had not merely grown
young; — he was a child again.

Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of
these fits of miniature enthusiasm, would shake her head,
with a strange mingling of the mother and sister, and of
pleasure and sadness, in her aspect. She said that it had
always been thus with Clifford when the humming-birds
came, — always, from his babyhood, — and that his de¬
light in them had been one of the earliest tokens by which
he showed his love for beautiful things. And it was a
wonderful coincidence, the good lady thought, that the
artist should have planted these scarlet-flowering beans
— which the humming-birds sought far and wide, and
which had not grown in the Pyncheon garden before for
forty years — on the very summer of Clifford’s return.

Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah’s eyes,
or overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she
was fain to betake herself into some corner lest Clifford
should espy her agitation. Indeed, all the enjoyments of
this period were provocative of tears. Coming so late as
it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its
balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest de¬
light. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness
of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized.
With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihi<*

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

167

lated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had
only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you
once look closely at it, is nothing. He himself, as was per¬
ceptible by many symptoms, lay darkly behind his pleas¬
ure, and knew it to be a baby-play, which he was to toy
and trifle with, instead of thoroughly believing. Clifford
saw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper consciousness,
that he was an example and representative of that great
class of people whom an inexplicable Providence is
continually putting at cross-purposes with the world:
breaking what seems its own promise in their nature;
withholding their proper food, and setting poison before
them for a banquet; and thus — when it might so easily,
as one would think, have been adjusted otherwise — mak¬
ing their existence a strangeness, a solitude, and torment.
All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched,
as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson
thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty comprehend
his little airy happiness. Frequently there was a dim
shadow of doubt in his eyes. ''Take my hand, Phcebe,'*
he would say, " and pinch it hard with your little fingers 1
Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and prove my¬
self awake by the sharp touch of pain! ” Evidently, he
desired this prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure
himself, by that quality which he best knew to be real,
that the garden, and the seven weather-beaten gables, and
Hepzibah's scowl, and Phoebe's smile, were real likewise.
Without this signet in his flesh, he could have attributed
no more substance to them than to the empty confusion
of imaginary scenes with which he had fed his spirit^ until
even that poor sustenance was exhausted.

The author needs great faith in his reader's sympathy:

168 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and inci¬
dents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the
idea of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder-
smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the
same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the orig¬
inal Adam was expelled.

One of the available means of amusement, of which
Fhcebe made the most in Clifford’s behalf, was that feath¬
ered society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we have already
said, was an immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family.
In compliance with a whim of Clifford, as it troubled him
to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty,
and now roamed at will about the garden; doing some
little mischief but hindered from escape by buildings on
three sides, and the difficult peaks of a wooden fence on the
other. They spent much of their abundant leisure on the
margin of Maule’s well, which was haunted by a kind of
snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the brackish
water itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world,
was so greatly esteemed by these fowls, that they might
be seen tasting, turning up their heads, and smacking their
bills, with precisely the air of wine-bibbers round a proba¬
tionary cask. Their generally quiet, yet often brisk, and
constantly diversified talk, one to another, or sometimes
in soliloquy, — as they scratched worms out of the rich,
black soil, or pecked at such plants as suited their taste,
— had such a domestic tone, that it was almost a wonder
why you could not*establish a regular interchange of ideas
about household matters, human and gallinaceous. All
hens are well worth studying for the piquancy and rich
variety of their manners; but by no possibility can there
have been other fowls of such odd appearance and deport*

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

160

ment as these ancestral ones. They probably embodied
the traditionary peculiarities of their whole line of pro¬
genitors, derived through an unbroken succession of eggs;
or ebe this individual Chanticleer and his two wives had
grown to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal,
on account of their solitary way of life, and out of sym-^
pathy for Hepzibah, their lady-patroness.

Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself,
though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity of
interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly bigger
than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were about the
size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it looked small
enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time, suf¬
ficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have
been the founder of the antiquated race. Instead of being
the youngest of the family, it rather seemed to have ag*
gregated into itself the ages, not only of these living sped-
mens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and foremoth¬
ers, whose united excellences and oddities were squeezed
into its little body. Its mother evidently regarded it as
the one chicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact, to
the worldb continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilib¬
rium of the present system of affairs, whether in church or
state. No lesser sense of the infant fowl’s importance
could have justified, even in a mother’s eyes, the perse*
verance with which she watched over its safety, ruffling
her small person to twice its proper size, and fiying in
everybody’s face that so much as looked towards her hope¬
ful progeny. No lower estimate could have vindicated
the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and her
unscnipulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vege¬
table, for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root. Her

170 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

nervous cluck, when the chicken happened to be hidden
in the long grass or under the squash-leaves; her gentle
croak of satisfaction, while sure of it beneath her wing;
her note of ill-concealed fear and obstreperous defiance,
when she saw her arch-enemy, a neighbor’s cat, on the top
of the high fence, — one or other of these sounds was to
be heard at almost every moment of the day. By degrees,
the observer came to feel nearly as much interest in this
chicken of illustrious race as the mother-hen did.

Phoebe, after getting well acquainted with the old
hen, was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in her
hand, which was quite capable of grasping its cubic inch
or two of body. While she curiously examined its heredi¬
tary marks, — the peculiur speckle of its plumage, the
funny tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs, —
the little biped, as she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious
wink. The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these
marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and
that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old
house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although
an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It
was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg,
and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle I

The second of Chanticleer’s two wives, ever since
Phcebe’s arrival, had been in a state of heavy despond¬
ency, caused, as it afterwards appeared, by her inability
to lay an egg. One day, however, by her self-important
gait, the sideway turn of her head, and the cock of her eye,
as she pried into one and another nook of the garden, —a
croaking to herself, all the while, with inexpressible com¬
placency, — it was made evident that this identical hen,
much as mankind undervalued her, carried something

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

171

about her person the worth of which was not to be esti-
niated either in gold or precious stones. Shortly after
there was a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chan-<
ticleer and all his family, including the wizened chicken,
who appeared to understand the matter quite as well as
did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon
Fhcebe found a diminutive egg, — not in the regular nest,
it was far too precious to be trusted there, — but cunningly
hidden under the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of
last year’s grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact, took
possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clifford’s
breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for
which, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous.
Thus unscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacriflce the
continuance, perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no
better end than to supply her brother with a dainty that
hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been
in reference to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day,
accompanied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his
post in front of Phoebe and Clifford, and delivered himself
of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own
pedigree, but for a fit of merriment on Phoebe’s part.
Hereupon, the offended fowl stalked away on his long
stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from Phoebe and
the rest of human nature, until she made her peace with
an offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails, was the
delicacy most in favor with his aristocratic taste.

We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet
of life that flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon
House. But we deem it pardonable to record these mean
incidents and poor delights, because they proved so greatly
tr> Clifford’s beneflt. They had the earth-smell in them^

172 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

and contributed to give him health and substance. Some
of his occupations wrought less desirably upon him. He
had a singular propensity, for example, to hang over
Maule’s well, and look at the constantly shifting phantas¬
magoria of figures produced by the agitation of the water
over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom.
He said that faces looked upward to him there, — beauti¬
ful faces, arrayed in bewitching smiles, — each momen¬
tary face so fair and rosy, and every smile so sunny, that
he felt wronged at its departure, until the same flitting
witchcraft made a new one. But sometimes he would
suddenly cry out, "The dark face gazes at me I*’ and be
miserable the whole day afterwards. Phoebe, when she
hung over the fountain by Clifford’s side, could see noth¬
ing of all this, — neither the beauty nor the ugliness, —
but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the gush of the
waters shook and disarranged them. And the dark face,
that so troubled Clifford, was no more than the shadow
thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees, and
breaking the inner light of Maule’s well. The truth was,
however, that his fancy — reviving faster than his will
and judgment, and always stronger than they — created
shapes of loveliness that were symbolic of his native char¬
acter, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that
ified his fate.

On Sundays, after Phoebe had been at church, — for
the girl had a church-going conscience, und would iiardly
have been at ease Had she missed either prayer, singing,
sermon, or benediction, — after church-time, therefore,
there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival in the garden.
In addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe, two guests
made up the company. One was the artist, Holgrave,

IHE PYNCHBON GARDEN

173

girho, spite of his consociation with reformers, and his other
^ueer and questionable traits, continued to hold an ele¬
vated place in Hepzibah’s regard. The other, we are
almost ashamed to say, was the venerable Uncle Venner,
in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, more respectable
than his ordinary weaf, inasmuch as it was neatly patched
on each elbow, and might be called an entire garment,
except for a slight inequality in the length of its skirts.
Clifford, on several occasions, had seemed to enjoy the
old man’s intercourse, for the sake of his mellow, cheer¬
ful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of a frost-bitten
apple, such as one picks up under the tree in December. A
man at the very lowest point of the social scale was easier
and more agreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter
than a person at any of the intermediate degrees; and,
moreover, as Clifford’s young manhood had been lost,
he was fond of feeling himself comparatively youthful,
now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Ven¬
ner. In fact, it was sometimes observable that Clifford
half wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of being
stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly
future still before him; visions, however, too indistinctly
drawn to be followed by disappointment — though,
doubtless, by <lepression — when any casual incident or
recollection made him sensible of the withered leaf.

So this oddly composed little social party used to as¬
semble ' under the ruinous arbor. Hepzibah — stately
as ever at heart, and yielding not an inch of her old gen¬
tility, but resting upon it so much the more, as justifying
a princess-like condescension — exhibited a not ungrace¬
ful hospitality. She talked kindly to the vagrant artist,
and took sage counsel — lady as she was — with the wood-

174 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

sawyer, the messenger of everybody’s petty errands, the
patched philosopher. And Uncle Venner, who had studied
the world at street-corners, and other posts equally well
adapted for just observation, was as ready to give out his
wisdom as a town-pump to give water.

Miss Hepzibah, ma’am, ” said he once, after they had
all been cheerful together, “1 really enjoy these quiet
little meetings of a Sabbath afternoon. They are very
much like what I expect to have after I retire to my farm 1 ”
“ Uncle Venner,*’ observed Clifford, in a drowsy, inward
tone, “is always talking about his farm. But I have
a better scheme for him, by and by. We shall seel”
“ Ah, Mr. Clifford Pynrheon! ” said the man of patches,
"you may scheme for me as much as you please; but I*m
not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if
I never bring it really to pass. It does seem to me that
men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up prop¬
erty upon property. If I had done so, I should feel
as if Providence was not bound to take care of me; and,
at all events, the city wouldn’t be! I’m one of those
people who think that infinity is big enough for us all —
and eternity long enough.”

“Why, so they are. Uncle Venner,” remarked
Pheebe, after a pause; for she had been trying to fathom
the profundity and appositeness of this concluding apo¬
thegm. “ But for this short life of ours, one would like a
house and a moderate garden-spot oJ one’s own. '

“It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling,
"that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the
bottom of bis wisdom; only they have not quite so much
distinctness in his mind as in that of the systematizing
Frenchman.”

THE PYNCHBON GARDEN

176

“Come, Phoebe/* said Hepzibah, "it is time to bring
the currants.**

And then, while the yellow richness of the declining
sunshine still fell into the open space of the garden, Phoebe
brought out a loaf of bread and a china bowl of currants,
freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed with sugar.
These, with water, —but not from the fountain of ill
omen, close at hand, — constituted all the entertainment.
Meanwhile, Holgrave took some pains to establish an in¬
tercourse with Clifford, actuated, it might seem, entirely
by an impulse of kindliness, in order that the present hour
might be cheerfuller than most which the poor recluse
had spent, or was destined yet to spend. Nevertheless, in
the artist’s deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes, there was,
now and then, an expression, not sinister, but question¬
able ; as if he had some other interest in the scene than
a stranger, a youthful and unconnected adventurer, might
be supposed to have. With great mobility of outward
mood, however, he applied himself to the task of enliven¬
ing the party; and with so much success, that even dark-
hued Hepzibah threw off one tint of melancholy, and made
what shift she could with the remaining portion. Phmbe
said to herself, — “ How pleasant he can be! ’* As for
Uncle Venner, as a mark of friendship and approbation,
he readily consented to afford the young man his counte¬
nance in the way of his professing, — not metaphorically,
be it Understood, but literally, by allowing a daguerreo¬
type of his face, so familiar to the town, to be exhibited at
the entrance of Holgrave *s studio.

Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet,
grew to be the gayest of them all. Either it was one
of those up-quivering flashes of the spirit, to which minds

176 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

in an abnormal state are liable, or else the artist had subtly
touched some chord that made musical vibration. In¬
deed, what with the pleasant summer evening, and the
sympathy of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it
was perhaps natural that a character so susceptible as
Clifford’s should become animated, and show itself readily
responsive to what was said around him. But he gave
out his own thoughts, likewise, with an airy and fanciful
glow; £.D that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor,
and made their escape among the interstices of the foliage.
He had been as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phcebe,
but never with such tokens of acute, although partial
intelligence.

But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Ga¬
bles, so did the excitement fade out of Clifford’s eyes.
He gazed vaguely and mournfully about him, as if he
missed something precious, and missed it the more drearily
for not knowing precisely what it was.

“I want my happiness!” at last he murmured,
hoarsely and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words.
"Many, many years have I waited for it! It is late I
It is late! I want my happiness!”

Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with
troubles that ought never to have befallen you. You
are partly crazy and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure,
as almost everybody is, — though some in less degree,
or less perceptibly^ than their fellows. Fate has no hap¬
piness in store for you; unless your quiet home in the
old family residence with the faithful Hepzibah, and your
long summer afternoons with Phoebe, and these Sabbath
festivals with Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist,
deserve to be called happiness! Why not? If not the

THE PYNCHEON GARDEN

177

thing itself, it is marvellously like it, and the more so for
that ethereal and intangible quality which causes it all
to vanish at too close an introspection. Take it, therefore,
while you may I Murmm uot, — question not, — but
make the most of it 1

XI

THE ARCHED WINDOW

From the inertness, or what we may term the vege^
tative character, of his ordinary mood, Clifford would
perhaps have been content to spend one day after an¬
other, interminably, — or, at least, throughout the sum¬
mer-time, — in just the kind of life described in the pre¬
ceding pages. Fancying, liowever, that it might be for
his benefit occasionally to diversify the scene, Pheebe
sometimes suggested that he should look out upon the
life of the street. For this purpose, they used to mount
the staircase together, to the second story of the house,
where, at the termination of a wide entry, there was an
arched window of uncommonly large dimensions, shaded
by a pair of curtains. It opened above the porch, where
there had formerly been a balcony, the balustrade of
which had long since gone to decay, and been removed.
At this arched window, throwing it open, but keeping
himself in comparative obscurity by means of the curtain,
Clifford had an opportunity of witnessing such a portion
of the great world’s movement as might be supposed to
roll through one of the retired streets of a not very popuo
lous city. But he and Pheebe made a sight as well worth
seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The pale, gray,
childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply cheerful,
and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect of Clifford,
peering from behind the faded crimson of the curtain, —

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THE ARCHED WINDOW

179

matching the monotony of every-day occurrences with a
kind of inconsequential interest and earnestness, and,
at every petty throb of his sensibility, turning for sym¬
pathy to the eyes of the bright young girl!

If once he were fairly seated at the window, even Pyn-
cheon Street would hardly be so dull and lonely but that,
somewhere or other along its extent, Clifford might dis¬
cover matter to occupy his eye, and titillate, if not en¬
gross, his observation. Things familiar to the youngest
child that had begun its outlook at existence seemed
strange to him. A cab; an omnibus, with its populous
interior, dropping here and there a passenger, and pick¬
ing up another, and thus typifying that vast rolling vehicle,
the world, the end of whose journey is everywhere and
nowhere; these objects he followed eagerly with his eyes,
but forgot them before the dust raised by the horses and
wheels had settled along their track. As regarded novel¬
ties (among which cabs and omnibuses were to be reck¬
oned), his mind appeared to have lost its proper gripe and
retentiveness. TSvi^e or thrice, for example, during the
sunny hours of the day, a water-cart went along by the
Pyncheon House, leaving a broad wake of moistened
earth, instead of the white dust that had risen at a lady’s
lightest footfall; it was like a summer shower, which
the city authorities had caught and tamed, and compelled
it into the commonest routine of their convenience. With
the water-cart Clifford could never grow familiar; it
always affected him with just the same surprise as at first.
His mind took an apparently sharp impression from it.
but lost the recollection of this perambulatory shower,
before its next reappearance, as completely as did the
street itself, along which the heat so quickly strewed

180 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

white dust again. It was the same with the railroad.
Clifford could hear the obstreperous howl of the steam-
devil, and, by leaning a little way from the arched win¬
dow, could catch a glimpse of the trains of cars, flashing
a brief transit across the extremity of the street. The
idea of terrible energy thus forced upon him was new at
every recurrence, and seemed to affect him as disagree¬
ably, and with almost as much surprise, the hundredth
time as the first.

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss
or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed
things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing
moment. It can merely bt^ a suspended animation; for,
were the power actually to perish, there would be little
use of immortality. We are less than ghosts, for the
time being, whenever this calamity befalls us.

Clifford was indeed the most inveterate of conservatives.
All the antique fashions of the street were dear to him;
even such as were characterized by a rudeness that would
naturally have annoyed his fastidious senses. He loved
the old rumbling and jolting carts, the former track of
which he still found in his long-buried remembrance, as
the observer of to-day finds the wheel-tracks of ancient
vehicles in Herculaneum. The butcher’s cart, with its
snowy canopy, was an acceptable object; so was the fish-
cart, heralded by its horn; so, likewise, was the country¬
man’s cart of vegetables, plodding from door to door,
with long pauses of the patient horse, while his owner
drove a trade in turnips, carrots, summer-squashes, string*
beans, green peas, and new potatoes, with half the house¬
wives of the neighborhood. The baker’s cart, with the
harsh mu^c of its bells, had a pleasant effect on Clifford,

THE ARCHED WINDOW

181

because, as few things else did, it jingled the very dis¬
sonance of yore. One afternoon a scissor-grinder chanced
to set his wheel a-going under the Pyncheon Elm, and
just in front of the arched window. Children came run¬
ning with their mother’s scissors, or the carving-knife,
or the paternal razor, or anything else that lacked an
edge (except, indeed, poor Clifford’s wits), that the grinder
might apply the article to his magic wheel. Round went
the busily revolving machinery, kept in motion by the
scissor-grinder’s foot, and wore away the hard steel against
the hard stone, whence issued an intense and spiteful pro¬
longation of a hiss as fierce as those emitted by Satan and
his compeers in Pandemonium, though squeezed into smaller
compass. It was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise,
as ever did petty violence to human ears. But Clifford
listened with rapturous delight. The sound, however
disagreeable, had very brisk life in it, and, together with
the circle of curious children watching the revolutions
of the wheel, appeared to give him a more vivid sense of
active, bustling, and sunshiny existence than he had at-
tained in almost any other way. Nevertheless, its charm
lay chiefly in the past; for the scissor-grinder’s wheel
had hissed in his childish ears.

He sometimes made doleful complaint that there were
no stage-coaches nowadays. And he asked in an injured
tone what had become of all those old square-top chaises,
with wings sticking out on either side, that used to be
drawn by a plough-horse, and driven by a farmer’s wife
and daughter, peddling whortleberries and blackberries
about the town. Their disappearance made him doubt,
he said, whether the berries had not left off growing in
the broad pastures and along the shady country lanes.

182 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty,
in however humble a way, did not require to be recom¬
mended by these old associations. Thb was observable
when one of those Italian boys (who are rather a mod¬
ern feature of our streets) came along with his barrel-
organ, and stopped under the wide and cool shadows of
the elm. With his quick professional eye he took note
of the two faces watching him from the arched window,
and, opening his instrument, began to scatter its melodies
abroad. He had a monkey on his shoulder, dressed in a
Highland plaid; and, to complete the sum of splendid
attractions wherewith he presented himself to the public
there was a company of little figures, whose sphere and
habitation was in the mtihogany case of his organ, and
whose principle of life was the music which the Italian
made it his business to grind out. In all their variety
of occupation, — the cobbler, the blacksmith, the soldier,
the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk¬
maid sitting by her cow, — this fortunate little society
might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and
to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank;
and, behold! every one of these small individuals started
into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler wrought
upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron; the
soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny
breeze with her fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his
bottle; a scholar opened his book with eager thirst for
knowledge, and turned his head to and fro along the page;
the milkmaid energetically drained her cow; and a miser
counted gold into his strong-box, — all at the same turn¬
ing of a crank. Yes; and, moved by the self-same im¬
pulse, a lover saluted his mistress on her lips ( Possibly

THE ARCHED WINDOW

183

some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to
signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, what¬
ever our business or amusement, — however serious,
however trifling,—all dance to one identical tune, and,
in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally
to pass. For the most remarkable aspect of the affair
was, that, at the cessation of the music, everybody was
petrified, at once, from the most extravagant life into a
dead torpor. Neither was the cobbler’s shoe finished,
nor the blacksmith’s iron shaped out; nor was there a
drop less of brandy in the toper’s bottle, nor a drop more
of milk in the milkmaid’s pail, nor one additional coin in
the miser’s strong-box, nor was the scholar a page deeper
in his book. All were precisely in the same condition as
before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste
to toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise.
Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was none the happier
for the maiden’s granted kiss I But, rather than swallow
this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral
of the show.

The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out
into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans,
took his station at the Italian’s feet. He turned a wrin¬
kled and abominable little visage to every passer-by,
and to the circle of children that soon gathered round,
and to Hepzibah’s shop-door, and upward to the arched
window, whence Phoebe and Clifford were looking down.
Every moment, also, he took off his Highland bonnet, and
performed a bow and scrape. Sometimes, moreover, he
made personal application to individuals, holding out
his small black palm, and otherwise plainly signifying his
excessive desire for whatever filthy lucre might happen

184 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

to be in anybody's pocket. The mean and low, yet
strangely man-like expression of his wilted countenance:
the prying and crafty glance, that showed him ready to
gripe at every miserable advantage; his enormous tail
(too enormous to be decently concealed under his gabar¬
dine), and the deviltry of nature which it betokened, —
take this monkey just as he was, in short, and you could
desire no better image of the Mammon of copper coin,
symbolizing the grossest form of the love of money.
Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the covetous
little devil. Phoebe threw down a whole handful of cents,
which he picked up with joyless eagerness, handed them
over to the Italian for safekeeping, and immediately
recommenced a series of pantomimic petitions for more.

Doubtless, more than one New-Englander — or, let
him be of what country he might, it is as likely to be the
case — passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, and
went on, without imagining how nearly his own moral con¬
dition was here exemplified. Clifford, however, was a being
of another order. He had taken childish delight in the
music, and smiled, too, at the figures which it set in motion.
But, after looking a while at the long-tailed imp, he was
so shocked by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as
physical, that he actually began to shed tears; a weak¬
ness which men of merely delicate endowments, and
destitute of the fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power
of laughter, can hardly avoid, when the worst and mean¬
est aspect of life hajipens to be presented to them.

Pyncheon Street was sometimes enlivened by spec¬
tacles of more imposing pretensions than the above, and
which brought the multitude along with them. With
a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal contact

THE ARCHED WINDOW

185

with the world, a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford,
whenever the rush and roar of the human tide grew
strongly audible to him. This was made evident, one
day, when a political procession, with hundreds of flaunt¬
ing banners, and drums, fifes, clarions, and cymbals, re¬
verberating between the rows of buildings, marched all
through town, and trailed its length of trampling footsteps,
and most infrequent uproar, past the ordinarily quiet
House of the Seven Gables. As a mere object of sight,
nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a
procession seen in its passage through narrow streets.
The spectator feels it to be fool's play, when he can dis¬
tinguish the tedious commonplace of each man's visage,
with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it,
and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or
laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his
black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be
viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and
long array through the centre of a wide plain, or the state¬
liest public square of a city; for then, by its remoteness,
it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made
up, into one broad mass of existence, — one great life, —
one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous
spirit animating it. But, on the other hand, if an im¬
pressible person, standing alone over the brink of one of
these processions, should behold it, not in its atoms, but
in, its aggregate,—as a mighty river of life, massive in
its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its depths,
calling to the kindred depth within him, — then the con¬
tiguity would add to the effect. It might so fascinate
him that he would hardly be restrained from plunging
into the surging stream of human sympathies.

186 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

So it proved with Clifford. He shuddered; he grew
pale; he threw an appealing look at Hepzibah and Phoebe,
who were with him at the window. They comprehended
nothing of his emotions, and supposed him merely dis¬
turbed by the unaccustomed tumult. At last, with trem¬
ulous limbs, he started up, set his foot on the window¬
sill, and in an instant more would have been in the un¬
guarded balcony. As it was, the whole procession might
have seen him, a wild, haggard figure, his gray locks float¬
ing in tl^e wind that waved their banners; a lonely being,
^tranged from his race, but now feeling himself man
again, by virtue of the irrepressible instinct that possessed
him. Had Clifford attained the balcony, he would prob¬
ably have leaped into the* street; but whether impelled
by the species of terror that sometimes urges its victim
over the very precipice which he shrinks from, or by a
natural magnetism, tending towards the great centre
of humanity, it were not easy to decide. Both impulses
might have wrought on him at once.

But his companions, affrighted by his gesture, — which
was that of a man hurried away in spite of himself, —
seized Clifford’s garment and held him back. Hepzibah
shrieked. Pheebe, to whom all extravagance was a horror,
burst into sobs and tears.

’'Clifford, Clifford! are you crazy?” cried his sister.

”1 hardly know, Hepzibah,” said Clifford, drawing
a long breath. "Fear nothing, — it is over now —but
had I taken that plunge, and survived it, methinks it would
have made me another man I”

Possibly, in some sense, Clifford may have been
right. He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to
take a deep, deep plunge into the ocean of human life,

THE ARCHED WINDOW

187

and to sink down and be covered by its profoundness,
and then to emerge, sobered, invigorated, restored to
the world and to himself. Perhaps, again, he required
nothing less than the great final remedy — death 1

A similar yearning to renew the broken links of
brotherhood with his kind sometimes showed itself in
a milder form ,* and once it was made beautiful by the
religion that lay even deeper than itself. In the inci¬
dent now to be sketched, there was a touching recogni¬
tion, on Clifford’s part, of God’s care and love towards
him, — towards this poor, forsaken man, who, if any
mortal could, might have been pardoned for regarding
himself as thrown aside, forgotten, and left to be the
sport of some fiend, whose playfulness was an ecstasy
of mischief.

It .was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright,
calm Sabbaths, with its own hallowed atmosphere, when
Heaven seems to diffuse itself over the earth’s face in a
solemn smile, no less sweet than solemn. On such a
Sabbath morn, were we pure enough to be its medium,
we should be conscious of the earth’s natural worship
ascending through our frames, on whatever spot of ground
we stood. The church-bells, with various tones, but all
in harmony, were calling out, and responding to one an¬
other, — “It is the Sabbath! — The Sabbath I — Yea;
the Sabbath! ’* — and over the whole city the bells scat¬
tered the blessed sounds, now slowly, now with livelier
joy, now one bell alone, now all the bells together, crying
earnestly,—“It is the Sabbath!” and flinging their
accents afar off, to melt into the air, and pervade it with
the holy word. The air, with God’s sweetest and ten-
derest sunshine in it, was meet for mankind to breathe

188 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

into their hearts, and send it forth again as the utterance
of prayer.

Clifford sat at the window with Hepzibah, watching the
neighbors as they stepped into the street. All of them,
however unspiritual on other days, were transfigured by
the Sabbath influence; so that their very garments —
whether it were an old man’s decent coat well brushed for
the thousandth time, or a little boy’s first sack and trousers
finished yesterday by his mother’s needle — had some¬
what oi the quality of ascension-robes. Forth, likewise,
from the portal of the old house, stepped Phoebe, put¬
ting up her small green sunshade, and throwing upward
a glance and smile of parting kindness to the faces at the
arched window. In her iispect there was a familiar glad¬
ness, and a holiness that you could play with, and yet
reverence it as much as ever. She was like a prayer,
offered up in the homeliest beauty of one’s mother-tongue.
Fresh was Phoebe, moreover, and airy and sweet in her ap¬
parel ; as if nothing that she wore — neither her gown,
nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little kerchief, any
more than her snowy stockings — had ever been put on
before; or,, if worn, were all the fresher for it, and with a
fragrance as if they had lain among the rose-buds.

The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford,
and went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple,
true, with a substance that could walk ou earth, and a
spirit that was capable of heaven.

“Hepzibah,” q^ked Clifford, after watching Phoebe
to the corner, “do you never go to church?”

“No, Clifford!” she replied, — “not these many, many
years 1”

“Were 1 to be there,” he rejoined, " it seems to me

THE ARCHED WINDOW

189

tliat I could pray once more, when so many human souls
were praying all around me I”

She looked into Clifford's face, and beheld there a soft
natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it were,
and ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence for God,
and kindly affection for his human brethren. The emo¬
tion communicated itself to Hepzibah. She yearned to
take him by the hand, and go and kneel down, they two
together, — both so long separate from the world, and,
as she now recognized, scarcely friends with Him above,

— to kneel down among the people, and be reconciled to
God and man at once.

"Dear brother,” said she, earnestly, "let us go! We
belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space in any
church to kneel upon; but let us go to some place of wor¬
ship, jeven if we stand -in the broad aisle. Poor and for¬
saken as we are, some pew-door will be opened to us!”

So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves ready,

— as ready as they could in the best of their old-fash¬
ioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid
away in trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy
smell of the past was on them, — made themselves ready,
in their faded bettermost, to go to church. They de¬
scended the staircase together, — gaunt, sallow Hepzibah,
and pale, emaciated, age-stricken Clifford I They pulled
open the front door, and stepped across the threshold,
and felt, both of them, as if they were standing in the
presence of the whole world, and with mankind’s great
and terrible eye on them alone. The eye of their Father
seemed to be withdrawn, and gave them no encourage¬
ment. Their hearts quaked within them at the idea
of taking one step farther.

190 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

" It cannot be, Hepzibah 1 — it is too late/* said Clifford,
with deep sadness. ** We are ghosts! We have no right
among human beings, — no right anywhere but in this
old house, which has a curse on it, and which, therefore,
we are doomed to haunt! And, besides,** he continued,
with a fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of
the man, ** it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It
is an ugly thought that I should be frightful to my fellow-
beings, and that children would cling to their mother’s
gowns at sight of me !’*

They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and
closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, they
found the whole interior of the house tenfold more dismal,
and the air closer and hcaWer, for the glimpse and breath
of freedom which they had just snatched. They could
not flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery,
and stood behind it to watch them stealing out. At the
threshold, they felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For,
what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart 1 What
jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

But it would be no fair picture of Clifford’s state of
mind were we to represent him as continually or pre¬
vailingly wretched. On the contrary, there was no other
man in the city, we are bold to aflirm, of so much as half
his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless
moments as himself. He had no burden of care upon
him; there were none of those questions and contingencies
with the future to be settled which wear away all other
lives, and render them not worth having by the very pro¬
cess of providing for their support. In this respect he
was a child, — a child for the whole term of his exist¬
ence, be it long or short. Indeed, his life seemed to be

THE ARCHED WINDOW

101

standing still at a period little in advance of childhood, and
to cluster all his reminiscences about that epoch; just as,
after the torpor of a heavy blow, the sufferer's reviving
consciousness goes back to a moment considerably be¬
hind the accident that stupefied him. He sometimes told
Phcebe and Hepzibah his dreams, in which he invariably
played the part of a child, or a very young man. So
vivid were they, in his' relation of them, that he once
held a dispute with his sister as to the particular figure
or print of a chintz morning-dress, which he had seen
their mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night.
Hepzibah, piquing herself on a woman’s accuracy in such
matters, held it to be slightly different from what Clifford
described; but, producing the very gown from an old
trunk, it proved to be identical with his remembrance
of it.' Had Clifford, every time that he emerged out of
dreams so lifelike, undergone the torture of transforma¬
tion from a boy into an old and broken man, the daily
recurrence of the shock would have been too much to bear.
It would have caused an acute agony to thrill from the
morning twilight, all the day through, until bedtime;
and even then would have mingled a dull, inscrutable
pain, and pallid hue of misfortune, with the visionary
bloom and adolescence of his slumber. But the nightly
moonshine interwove itself with the morning mist, and
enveloped him as in a robe, which he hugged about his
person, and seldom let realities pierce through; he was
not often quite awake, but slept open-eyed, and perhaps
fancied himself most dreaming then.

Thus, lingering always so near his childhood, he had
sympathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher
thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring

192 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

not far from the fountain-head. Though prevented,
by a subtile sense of propriety, from desiring to associate
with them, he loved few things better than to look out
of the arched window, and see a little girl driving her hoop
along the sidewalk, or school boys at a game of ball. Their
voices, also^ were very pleasant to him, heard at a dis¬
tance, all swarming and intermingling together as flies
do in a sunny room.

Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their
sports. One afternoon he was seized with an irresistible
desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah
told Phoebe apart, that had been a favorite one with
her brother when they wfTe both children. Behold him,
therefore, at the arched window, with an earthen pipe
in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a
wan, unreal smile over his countenance, where still hovered
a beautiful grace, which his worst enemy must have ac¬
knowledged to be spiritual and immortal, since it had
survived so long! Behold him, scattering airy spheres
abroad, from the window into the street! Little im¬
palpable worlds were those soap-bubbles, with the big
world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the
nothing of their surface. It was curious to see how the
passers-by regarded these brilliant fantasies, as they came
floating down, and made the dull atmosphere imaginative
about them. Some stopped to gaze, and, perhaps, carried
a pleasant recollection of the bubbles onward a::' far as
the street-corner; some looked angrily upward, as if poor
Clifford wronged them by setting an image of beauty
afloat so near their dusty pathway. A great many put*
out their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal:'
and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble.

THE ARCHED WINDOW

193

with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as if
it had never been.

At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dig¬
nified presence happened to be passing, a large bubble
sailed majestically down, and burst right against his nose 1
He looked up, — at first with a stem, keen glance, which
penetrated at once into the obscurity behind the arched
window, — then with a smile which might be conceived
as diffusing a dog-day sultriness for the space of several
yards about him.

“Aha, Cousin Clifford!” cried Judge Pyncheon.
"What I still blowing soap-bubbles I”

The tone seemed as if meant to be kind and sooth¬
ing, but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it. As for
Clifford, an absolute palsy of fear came over him. Apart
from any definite cause of dread which his past experience
might have given him, he felt that native and original
horror of the excellent Judge which is proper to a weak,
delicate, and apprehensive character in the presence of
massive strength. Strength is incomprehensible by
weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible. There is
no greater bugbear than a strong-willed relative in the
circle of his own connections.

xn

THE DAGXJERREOTYPIST

It must not be supposed that the life of a personage
naturally so active as Phcebe could be wholly confined
within the precincts of the old Pyncheon House. Clifford’s
demands upon her time were usually satisfied, in those
long days, considerably earlier than sunset. Quiet as
his daily existence seemed, it nevertheless drained all
the resources by which he lived. It was not physical exer¬
cise that overwearied him, — for except that he sometimes
wrought a little with a hoe, or paced the garden-walk,
or, in rainy weather, traversed a large unoccupied room,
— it was his tendency to remain only too quiescent, as
regarded any toil of the limbs and muscles. But, either
there was a smouldering fire within him that consumed
his vital energy, or the monotony that would have dragged
itself with benumbing effect over a mind differently sit^
uated was no monotony to Clifford. Possibly, he was
in a state of second growth and recovery, and was con¬
stantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect
from sights, sounds, and events, which passed as a perfect
void to persons more practised with the world. As all
is activity and vicissitude to the new mind of a child,
so might it be, likewise, to a mind that had undergone a
kind of new creation, after its longnsuspended life.

Be the cause what it might, Clifford commonly re*
tired to rest, thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams

194

THE DAGUERREOTYPIST

195

were still melting through his window-curtains, or were
thrown with late lustre on the chamber wall. And while
he thus slept early, as other children do, and dreamed of
childhood, Phcebe was free to follow her own tastes for
the remainder of the day and evening.

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a
character so little susceptible of morbid influences as
that of Phcebe. The old house, as we have already said,
had both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its wall; it was
not good to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Hep-
zibah, though she had her valuable and redeeming traits,
had grown to be a kind of lunatic, by imprisoning herself
so long in one place, with no other company than a single
series of ideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense
of wrong. Clifford, the reader may perhaps imagine,
was too inert to operate morally on his fellow-creatures,
however intimate and exclusive their relations with him.
But the sympathy or magnetism among human beings
is more subtile and universal than we think; it exists,
indeed, among difiPerent classes of organized life, and
vibrates from one to another. A flower, for instance, as
Phoebe herself observed, always began to droop sooner
in Clifford’s hand, or Hepzibah’s, than in her own; and
by the same law, converting her whole daily life into a
flower-fragrance for these two sickly spirits, the bloom¬
ing girl must inevitably droop and fade much sooner than
if worn on a younger and happier breast. Unless she
had now and then indulged her brisk impulses, and
breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean breezes
along the shore, — had occasionally obeyed the impulse
of Nature, in New England girls, by attending a meta^
physical or philosophical lecture, or viewing a sevenr

196 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES

mile panorama, or listening to a concert, — had gone
shopping about the city, ransacking entire depots of
splendid merchandise, and bringing home a ribbon, —
had employed, likewise, a little time to read the Bible,
in her chamber, and had stolen a little more to think of
her mother and her native place, — unless for such moral
medicines as the above, we should soon have beheld our
poor Phoebe grow thin and put on a bleached unwholesome
aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of old-
maidenhood and a cheerless future.

Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly
to be regretted, although whatever charm it infringed
upon was repaired by another, perhaps more precious.
She was not so constantly gay, but had her moods of
thought, which Clifford, on the whole, liked better than
her former phase of unmingled cheerfulness; because
now she understood him better and more delicately, and
sometimes even interpreted him to himself. Her eyes
looked larger, and darker, and deeper; so deep, at some
silent moments, that they seemed like Artesian wells,
down, down, into the infinite. She was less girlish than
when we first beheld her alighting from the omnibus;
less girlish, but more a woman.

The only youthful mind with which Phoebe had an
opportunity of frequent intercourse w'as that of the
dagueireotypist. Inevitably, by the pressure of the se¬
clusion about them, they had been bi’ought into habits
of some familiarity. Had they met under different cir¬
cumstances, neither of these young persons would have
been likely to bestow much thought upon the other,
unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarity should have
proved a principle of mutual attraction. Both, it is true,

The Dining Room, Showing the Mahogany Family Dining Table.

THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 197

were characters proper to New England life, and possess¬
ing a common ground, therefore, in their more external de¬
velopments; but as unlike, in their respective interiors,
as if their native climes had been at world-wide distance.
During the early part of their acquaintance, Phcebe had
held back rather more than was customary with her frank
and simple manners from Holgrave's not very marked
advances. Nor was she yet satisfied that she knew him
well, although they almost daily met and talked together,
in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be a familiar way.

The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to
Phoebe something of his history. Young as he was, and
had his career terminated at the point already attained,
there had been enough of incident to fill, very creditably,
an autobiographic volume. A romance on the plan of
Gil Bl&s, adapted to American society and manners, would
cease to be a romance. The experience of many individ¬
uals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling,
would equal the vicissitudes of the Spaniard’s earlier
life; while their ultimate success, or the point whither
they tend, may be incomparably higher than any that a
novelist would imagine for his hero. Holgrave, as he
told Phcebe, somewhat proudly, could not boast of his
origin, unless as being exceedingly humble, nor of his
education, except that it had been the scantiest possible,
and obtained by a few winter-months’ attendance at a
district school. Left early to his own guidance, he had
begun to be self-dependent while yet a boy; and it was
a condition aptly suited to his natural force of will.
Though now but twenty-two years old (lacking some
months, which are years in such a life), he had already
been, first, a country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in

198 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

a country store; and, either at the same time or after-
awards, the political editor of a country newspaper. He
had subsequently travelled New England and the Middle
States, as a pedlar, in the employment of a Connecti¬
cut manufactory of cologne-water and other essences.
In an episodical way he had studied and practised den¬
tistry, and with very flattering success, especially in many
of the factory-towns along our inland streams. As a
supernumerary official, of some kind or other, aboard
a packet-ship, he had visited Europe, and found means,
before his return, to see Italy, and part of France and Ger¬
many. At a later period he had spent some months in a
community of Fourierists. Still more recently he had
been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for which science
(as he assured Fhcebc, and, indeed, satisfactorily proved,
by putting Chanticleer, who happened to be scratching
near by, to sleep) he had very remarkable endowments.

His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no more
importance in his own view, nor likely to be more per¬
manent, than any of the preceding ones. It had been
taken up with the careless alacrity of an adventurer, who
had his bread to earn. It would be thrown aside as care¬
lessly, whenever he should choose to earn his bread by
some other equally digressive means. But what was
most remarkable, and, perhaps, showed a more than
common poise in the young man, was the fact that, amid
all these personal vicissitudes, he had never lost h.s iden¬
tity. Homeless as* he had been, — continually changing
his whereabouts, and, therefore, responsible neither to
public opinion nor to individuals, — putting off one ex¬
terior, and snatching up another, to be soon shifted for
a third, — he had never violated the innermost man.

THE DAGUEHKEOTTPIST

b\it bad earned bis conscience along wltb 1dm. It was
impossible to know Holgrave without recognizing this
to be the fact. Hepzibah had seen it. Pheebe soon saw
it, likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence which
such a certainty inspires. She was startled, however,
and sometimes repelled, — not by any doubt of his
integrity to whatever law he acknowledged, but by a
sense that his law differed from her own. He made her
uneasy, and seemed to unsettle everything around her,
by his lack of reverence for what was fixed, unless, at a
moment’s warning, it could establish its right to hold
its ground.

Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affection¬
ate in his nature. He was too calm and cool an observer.
Phoebe felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom or never.
He took a certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her
brother, and Phoebe herself. He studied them atten¬
tively, and allowed no slightest circumstance of their in¬
dividualities to escape him. He was ready to do them
whatever good he might; but, after all, he never exactly
made common cause with them, nor gave any reliable
evidence that he loved them better in proportion as he
knew them more. In his relations with them, he seemed
to be in quest of mental food, not heart-sustenance.
Phoebe could not conceive what interested him so much
in her friends and herself, intellectually, since he cared
nothing for them, or, comparatively, so little, as objects
of human affection.

Always, in his interviews with Phoebe, the artist made
especial inquiry as to the welfare of Clifford, whom, ex¬
cept at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw.

“Does he still seem happy he asked one day.

200 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

“As happy as a child/’ answered Phoebe; “but—«
like a child, too — very easily disturbed.”

“How disturbed?” inquired Holgrave. “By things
without, or by thoughts within?”

"I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?”replied
Phoebe, with simple piquancy. “Very often his humor
changes without any reason that can be guessed at, just
as a cloud comes over the sun. Latterly, since I have
begun to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right
to look closely into his moods. He has had such a great
sorrow, that his heart is made all solemn and sacred by
it. When he is cheerful, — when the sun shines into his
mind, — then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light
reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the
shadow falls!”

“How prettily you express this sentiment!” said the
artist. “I can understand the feeling, without possess¬
ing it. Had I your opportunities, no scruples would pre¬
vent me from fathoming Clifford to the full depth of my
plummet-line!”

“How strange that you should wish it!” remarked
Phoebe, involuntarily. “What is Cousin Clifford to
you?”

"Oh, nothing, — of course, nothing!” answered Hol¬
grave, with a smile. “Only this is such an odd and in¬
comprehensible world! The more I look at it the more
it puzzles me, and 1 begin to suspect that a man’s be¬
wilderment is thd measure of his wisdom. Men and
women, and children, too, are such strange creatures,
that one never can be certain that he really knows them;
nor ever guess what they have been, from what he sees
them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! Clifford! What

THE DAGUERREOTTPIST

201

a complex riddle — a complexity of complexities — do
they present! It requires intuitive sympathy, like a
young girl’s, to solve it. A meire observer, like myself
(who never have any intuitions, and am, at best, only
subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray.”

The artist now turned the conversation to themes less
dark than that which they had touched upon. Phoebe
and he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his
premature experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful
spirit of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart
and fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making
it all as bright as on the first day of creation. Man’s
own youth is the world’s youth; at least, he feels as if
it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance
is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould
into whatever shape he likes. So it was with Holgrave.
He could talk sagely about the world’s old age, but never
actually believed what he said; he was a young man still,
and therefore looked upon the world — that gray-bearded
and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable
— as a tender stripling, capable of being improved into
all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the
remotest promise of becoming. He had that sense, or
inward prophecy, — which a young man had better never
have been born than not to have, and a mature man had
better die at once than utterly to relinquish, — that we
are not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way,
but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad
of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own lifetime.
It seemed to Holgrave — as doubtless it has seemed to the
hopeful of every century since the epoch of Adam’s grand¬
children— that in this age, more than ever before, the

202 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

moss-grown and rotten Past is'to be tom down, and lifeless
institutions to be thrust out of the way, and their dead
corpses buried, and everything to begin anew.

As to the main point, — may we never live to doubt
it I — as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist
was surely right. His error lay in supposing that this
age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see
the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new
suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patch-
work ; in applying his own little life-span as the measure
of an interminable achievement; and, more than all, in
fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in
view whether he himself should contend for it or against
it. Yet it was well for him to think so. This enthusiasm,
infusing itself through the calmness of his character, and
thus taking an aspect of settled thought and wisdom,
would serve to keep his youth pure, and make his aspira¬
tions high. And when, with the years settling down more
weightily upon him, his early faith should be modified
by inevitable experience, it would be with no harsh and
sudden revolution of his sentiments. He would still
have faith in man’s brightening destiny, and perhaps
love him all the better, as he should recognize his help¬
lessness in his own behalf; and the haughty faith, with
which he began life, would be well bartered for a far hum¬
bler one at its close, in discerning that man’s best directed
effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the
sole worker of realities.

Holgrave had read very little, and that little in pass¬
ing through the thoroughfare of life, where the mystic
language of his books was necessarily mixed up with the
babble of the multitudes, so that both one and the other

THE DAGUERREOTYPIST

203

were apt to lose any sense that might have been properly
their own. He considered himself a thinker, and was
certainly of a thoughtful turn, but, with his own path to
discover, had perhaps hardly yet reached the point where
an educated man begins to think. The true value of his
character lay in that deep consciousness of inward strength,
which made all his past vicissitudes seem merely like a
change of garments; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that
he scarcely knew of its existence, but which gave a warmth
to everything that he laid his hand on; in that personal
ambition, hidden—from his own as well as other eyes—
among his more generous impulses, but in which lurked
a certain efficacy, that might solidify him from a theorist
into the champion of some practicable cause. Altogether
in his culture and want of culture, — in his crude, wild,
and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that
counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous
zeal for man’s welfare, and his recklessness of whatever
the ages had established in man’s behalf; in his faith, and
in his infidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked,
— the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the repre¬
sentative of many compeers in his native land.

His career it would be difficult to prefigure. There
appeared to be qualities in Holgrave, such as, in a country
where everything is free to the hand that can grasp it,
could hardly fail to put some of the world’s prizes within
his teach. But these matters are delightfully uncertain.
At almost every step in life, we meet with young men
of just about Holgrave’s age, for whom we anticipate
wonderful things, but of whom, even after much and care¬
ful inquiry, we never happen to hear another word. The
effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss

204 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false
brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other
people. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams,
they show finely in their first newness, but cannot stand
the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after
washing-day.

But our business is with Holgrave as we find him on
this particular afternoon, and in the arbor of the Pyn-
cheon gi;rden. In that point of view, it was a pleasant
sight to behold this young man, with so much faith in
himself, and so fair an appearance of admirable powers,
— so little harmed, too, by the many tests that had tried
his metal, — it was pleasant to see him in his kindly inter¬
course with Phcebe. Her thought had scarcely done him
justice when it pronounced him cold; or, if so, he had
grown warmer now. Without such purpose on her part,
and unconsciously on his, she made the House of the Seven
Gables like a home to him, and the garden a familiar pre¬
cinct. With the insight on which he prided himself, he
fancied that he could look through Phoebe, and all around
her, and could read her off like a page of a child's story¬
book. But these transparent natures are often decep¬
tive in their depth; those pebbles at the bottom of the
fountain are farther from us than we think. Thus the
artist, whatever he might judge of Phoebe’s capacity,
was beguiled, by some silent charm of hers, to talk freely
of what he dreamed of doing in the world. He poured
himself out as to another self. Very possibly, he forgot
Phoebe while he talked to her, and was moved only by
the inevitable tendency of thought, when rendered sym¬
pathetic by enthusiasm and emotion, to flow into the
first sofa reservoir which it finds. But, had you peeped

THE DAGUERREOTTPIST

205

at them through the chinks of the garden-fence, the young
man’s earnestness and heightened color might have led
you to suppose that he was making love to the young
girl!

At length, something was said by Holgrave that made
it apposite for Phoebe to inquire what had first brought
him acquainted with her cousin Hepzibah, and why he
now chose to lodge in the desolate old Pyncheon House.
Without directly answering her, he turned from the Future,
which had heretofore been the theme of his discourse,
and began to speak of the influences of the Past. One
subject, indeed, is but the reverberation of the other.

“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried he,
keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding conversation.
“It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body I In
fact, ihe case is just as if a young giant were compelled
to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of
the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago,
and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a mo¬
ment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to
bygone times, — to Death, if we give the matter the right
word!”

“ But I do not see it,” observed Phoebe.

“For example, then,” continued Holgrave: “a dead
man, if he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth
no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed
in Accordance with the notions of men much longer dead
than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats;
and living judges do but search out and repeat his de¬
cisions. We read in dead men’s books! We laugh at
dead men’s jokes, and cry at dead men’s pathos I We
are sick of dead men’s diseases, physical and moral, and

206 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN QABLES

die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed
their patients! We worship the living Deity according
to dead men’s forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to
do, of our own free motion, a dead man’s icy hand ob¬
structs us! Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead
man’s white, immitigable face encounters them, and
freezes our very heart I And we must be dead ourselves
before we can begin to have our proper influence on our
own world, which will then be no longer our world, but
the world of another generation, with which we shall have
no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought to have said,
too, that we live in dead men’s houses; as, for instance,
in this of the Seven Gables!”

"And why not,” said Phoebe, “so long as we can be
comfortable in them?”

"But we shall live to see the day, 1 trust,” went on
the artist," when no man shall build his house for posterity.
Why should he ? He might just as reasonably order a
durable suit of clothes, — leather, or gutta-percha, ot
whatever else lasts longest, — so that his great-grand¬
children should have the benefit of them, and cut pre^
cisely the same figure in the world that he himself does.
If each generation were allowed and expected to build
its own houses, that single change, comparatively unim¬
portant in itself, would imply almost every reform which
society is now suifering for. I doubt whether even our
public edifices — our capitols, state-houses, court-houses,
city-hall, and churches — ought to be built of such per¬
manent materials as stone or brick. It were better that
they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or there¬
abouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform
the institutions which they symbolize.”

THE DAGUERREOTYPIST

207

“How you hate everything old!” said Phoebe, in dis¬
may. “It makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting
world I”

“I certainly love nothing mouldy/’ answered Holgrave.
*'Now, this old Pyncheon House! Is it a wholesome
place to live in, with its black shingles, and the green moss
that shows how damp they are ? — its dark, low-studded
rooms? — its grime and sordidness, which are the crys¬
tallization on its walls of the human breath, that has been
drawn and exhaled here in discontent and anguish ? The
house ought to be purified with fire, — purified till only
its ashes remain!”

“Then why do you live in it?” asked Phcebe, a little
piqued.

"Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books,
however,” replied Holgrave. “The house, in my view,
is expressive of that odious and abominable Past, with
all its bad influences, against which I have just been de¬
claiming. I dwell in it for a while, that I may know the
better how to hate it. By the by, did you ever hear the
story of Maule, the wizard, and what happened between
him and your immeasurably great-grandfather ?”

“ Yes, indeed! ” said Phosbe; “ I heard it long ago, from
my father, and two or three times from my cousin Hep-
zibah, in the month that I have been here. She seems to
think that all the calamities of the Pyncheons began from
that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him. And you,
Mr. Holgrave, look as if you thought so too I How sin¬
gular, that you should believe what is so very absurd, when
you reject many things that are a great deal worthier of
credit!”

“I do believe it,” said the artist, seriously; “not as a

208 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

superstition, however, but as proved by unquestionable
facts, and as exemplifying a theory. Now, see: under
those seven gables, at which we now look up, — and which
old Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the house of his de¬
scendants, in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch
far beyond the present, — under that roof, through a por¬
tion of three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse
of conscience, a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst
kindred, various misery, a strange form of death, dark
suspicion, unspeakable disgrace, — all, or most of which
calamity I have the means of tracing to the old Puritan's
inordinate desire to plant and endow a family. To plant
a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong
and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in
every half-century, at longest, a family should be merged
into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all
about its ancestors. Human blood, in order to keep its
freshness, should run in hidden streams, as the water of
an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean pipes. In the
family existence of these Pyncheons, for instance, — for¬
give me, Phcebe; but I cannot think of you as one of them,
— in their brief New England pedigree, there has been
time enough to infect them all with one kind of lunacy or
another!"

“You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,*'
said Phoebe, debating with herself whether she ought to
take offence.

“ 1 speak true thoughts to a true mind! ’* answered Hol-
grave, with a vehemence which Phoebe had not before
witnessed in him. “ The truth is as I say! Furthermore,
the original perpetrator and father of this mischief ap¬
pears to hpve perpetuated himself, and still walks the

THE DAGUERREOTYPIST

209

street, — at least, his very image, in mind and body, —
with the fairest prospect of transmitting to posterity as
rich and as wretched an inheritance as he has received!
Do you remember the daguerreotype, and its resem¬
blance to the old portrait?”

"How strangely in earnest you are 1” exclaimed Phcebe,
looking at him with surprise and perplexity; half alarmed
and partly inclined to laugh. "You talk of the lunacy
of the Pyncheons; is it contagious?”

"I understand you I” said the artist, coloring and laugh*
ing. "1 believe I am a little mad. This subject has
taken hold of my mind with the strangest tenacity of
clutch since I have lodged in yonder old gable. As one
method of throwing it off, I have put an incident of the
Pvncheon family history, with which I happen to be ac-
quaintedi- into the form of a legend, and mean to publish
it in a magazine.”

"Do you write for the magazines?” inquired Phoebe.

"Is it possible you did not know it?” cried Holgrave.
" Well, such is literary fame! Yes, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon,
among the multitude of my marvellous gifts 1 have
tliat of writing stories; and my name has figured, I can
assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey, making
as respectable an appearance, for aught I could sec, as any
of the canonized bead-roll with which it was associated.
But shall I read you my story ?”

“Yes, if it is not very long,” said Phoebe, — and added
laughingly, — “ nor very dull.”

As this latter point was one which the daguerreotypist
could not decide for himself, he forthwith produced his
roll of manuscript, and, while the late sunbeams gilded
the seven gables, began to read.

XIII

ALICE PYNCHEON

There was a message brought, one day, from the wor¬
shipful Gervayse Pyncheon to young Matthew Maule, the
carpenter, desiring his immediate presence at the House
of the Seven Gables.

“And what does your master want with me?" said the
carpenter to Mr. Pyncheon*s black servant. “Does the
house need any repair ? Well it may, by this time; and
no blame to my father who built it, neither! I was reading
the old Colonel’s tombstone, no longer ago than last Sab¬
bath ; and, reckoning from that date, the house has stood
seven-and-thirty years. No wonder if there should be a
job to do on the roof."

“Don’t know what massa wants,’’ answered Scipio.
“The house is a berry good house, and old Colonel Pyn¬
cheon think so too, I reckon; — else why the old man
haunt it so, and frighten a poor nigga, as he does?’’

“Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that
I’m coming,’’ said the carpenter, witli a laugh. “For a
fair, workmanlike job, he’ll find me his man. And so the
house is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter workman
than I am to keep the spirits out of the Seven Gables.
Even if the Colonel would be quiet,’’ he added, muttering
to himself, “ my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty
sure to stick to the Pyncheons as long as their walls hold
together.’’ *

2\0

ALICE PYNCHEON

211

"What’s that you mutter to yourself, Matthew
Maule?” asked Scipio. "And what for do you look so
black at me?”

"No matter, darky!” said the carpenter. "Do you
think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your
master I’m coming; and if you happen to see Mistress
Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule’s humble re¬
spects to her. She has brought a fair face from Italy, —
fair, and gentle, and proud, — has that same Alice Pyn-
cheon!”

"He talk of Mistress Alice I” cried Scipio, as he returned
from his errand. "The low carpenter-man I He no
business so much as to look at her a great way off I”

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be
observed, was a person little understood, and not very
generally liked, in the town where he resided; not that
anything could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill
and diligence in the handicraft which he exercised. The
aversion (as it might justly be called) with which many
persons regarded him was partly the result of his own char¬
acter and deportment, and partly an inheritance.

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one
of the early settlers of the town, and who had been a
famous and terrible wizard in his day. This old reprobate
was one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his
brother ministers, and the learned judges, and other wise
men, and Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor,
made such laudable efforts to weaken the great enemy of
souls, by sending a multitude of his adherents up the rocky
pathway of Gallows Hill. Since those days, no doubt, it
had grown to be suspected that, in consequence of an un¬
fortunate overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the

212 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

proceedings against the witches had proved far less acv
ceptable to the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch
Enemy whom they were intended to distress and utterly
overwhelm. It is not the less certain, however, that awe
and terror brooded over the memories of those who died
for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their graves, in the
crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of re*
taining the occupants who had been so hastily thrust into
them. Old Matthew Maule, especially, was known to
have as little hesitation or difficulty in rising out of his
grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and was
as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.
This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment
seemed to have wrought no manner of amendment) had
an inveterate habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled
the House of the Seven Gables, against the owner of
which he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground-
rent. The ghost, it appears, — with the pertinacity
which was one of his distinguishing characteristics while
alive, — insisted that he was the rightful proprietor of
the site upon which the house stood. His terms were,
that either the aforesaid ground-rent, from the day when
the cellar began to be dug, should be paid down, or the
mansion itself given up; else he, the ghostly creditor,
would have his finger in all the affairs of the Pyncheons,
and make everything go wrong with them, though it
should be a thousand years after his death. It was a
wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incred¬
ible to those who could remember what an inflexibly ob^
stinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been.

Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule
ot our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited

ALICE PYNCHBON

213

some of his ancestor’s questionable traits. It is wonder¬
ful how many absurdities were promulgated in reference
to the young man. He was fabled, for example, to have
a strange power of getting into people’s dreams, and reg¬
ulating matters there according to his own fancy, pretty
much like the stage-manager of a theatre. There was a
great deal of talk among the neighbors, particularly the
petticoated ones, about'what they called the witchcraft
of Maule’s eye. Some said that he could look into people’s
minds; others, that, by the marvellous power of this eye,
he could draw people into his own mind, or send them, if
he pleased, to do errands to his grandfather, in the spir¬
itual world; others, again, that it was what is termed an
Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty of blighting
corn, and drying children into mummies with the heart¬
burn.' But, after all, what worked most to the young
carpenter’s disadvantage was, first, the reserve and stern¬
ness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact of his
not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion of his
holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and polity.

After receiving Mr. Fyncheon’s message, the carpenter
merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened
to have in hand, and then took his way towards the House
of the Seven Gables. This noted edifice, though its
style might be getting a little out of fashion, was still as
respectable a family residence as that of any gentleman
in town. The present owner, Gervayse Pyncheon, was
said to have contracted a dislike to the house, in conse¬
quence of a shock to his sensibility, in early childhood,
from the sudden death of his grandfather. In the very
act of running to climb Colonel Pyncheon’s knee, the
boy had discovered the old Puritan to be a corpse I On

214 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

arriving at manhood, Mr. Pyncheon had visited England,
where he married a lady of fortune, and had subse¬
quently spent many years, partly in the mother country,
and partly in various cities on the continent of Europe.
During this period, the family mansion had been consigned
to the charge of a kinsman, who was allowed to make it
his home for the time being, in consideration of keeping the
premises in thorough repair. So faithfully had this con¬
tract been fulfilled, that now, as the carpenter approached
the house, his practised eye could detect nothing to
criticise in its condition. The peaks of the seven gables
rose up sharply; the shingled roof looked thoroughly
water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work entirely cov¬
ered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the October sun
as if it had been new only a week ago.

The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like
the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human
countenance. You could see, at once, that there was the
stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-
wood was passing through tlie gateway, towards the out¬
buildings in the rear; the fat cook — or probably it might
be the housekeeper — stood at the side door, bargaining
for some turkeys and poultry, which a countryman had
brought for sale. Now and then a maid-servant, neatly
dressed, and now the shining sable face of a slave, might
be seen bustling across the windows, in the lower part of
the house. At an open window of a room in the second
story, hanging over some pots of beautiful and delicate
flowers, — exotics, but which had never known a more
genial sunshine than that of the New England autumn,
— was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the
flowers, and beautiful and delicate as they. Her presence

The Nail-studded Door.

This heavy oaken door was desiened to withstand Indian attacks*

ALICE PYNCHEON

215

imparted an indescribable grace and faint witchery to the
whole edifice. In other respects, it was a substantial,
jolly-looking mansion, and seemed fit to be the residence
of a patriarch, who might establish his own headquarters
in the front gable and assign one of the remainder to each
of his six children, while the great chimney in the centre
should symbolize the old fellow’s hospitable heart, which
kept them all warm, and made a great whole of the
seven smaller ones.

There was a vertical sundial on the front gable; and
as the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted
the hour.

"Three o'clock!” said he to himself. "My father
told me that dial was put up only an hour before the old
Colonel’s death. How truly it has kept time these seven-
and-'thirty years past! The shadow creeps and creeps,
and is always looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!”

It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew
Maule, on being sent for to a gentleman’s house, to go to
the back door, where servants and work-people were usu¬
ally admitted; or at least to the side entrance, where the
better class of tradesmen made application. But the
carpenter had a great deal of pride and stiffness in his na¬
ture ; and, at this moment, moreover, his heart was bitter
with the sense of hereditary wrong, because he considered
the great Pyncheon House to be standing on soil which
shCuld have been his own. On this very site, beside a
spring of delicious water, his grandfather had felled the
pine-trees and built a cottage, in which children had been
born to him; and it was only from a dead man's stiffened
fingers that Colonel Pyncheon had wrested away the title-
deeds. So young Maule went straight to the principal

216 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

entrance, beneath a portal of carved oak, and gave sudi
a peal of the iron knocker that you would have imag¬
ined the stern old wizard himself to be standing at the
threshold.

Black Scipio answered the summons in a prodigious
hurry; but showed the whites of his eyes, in amazement
on beholding only the carpenter.

"Lord-a-mercy I what a great man he be, this carpenter
fellow I'* mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. ** Any¬
body think he beat on the door with his biggest hammer 1 ”
“Here I ami” said Maule, sternly. “Show me the
way to your master’s parlor 1”

As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melan¬
choly music thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way
proceeding from one of the rooms above stairs. It was
the harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon had brought with
her from beyond the sea. The fair Alice bestowed most
of her maiden leisure between flowers and music, although
the former were apt to droop, and the melodies were often
sad. She was of foreign education, and could not take
kindly to the New England modes of life, in which nothing
beautiful had ever been developed.

As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule’s
arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering
the carpenter into his master’s presence. The room
in which this gehtleman sat was a parlor of moderate
size, looking out upon the garden of the house, and having
its windows partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees.
It was Mr. Pyncheon’s peculiar apartment, and was pro¬
vided with furniture, in an elegant and costly style, prin¬
cipally from Paris; 4 the floor (which was unusual at that
day) beini; covered with a carpet, so skilfully and richly

ALICE PYNCHEON

217

wit)ught that it seemed to glow as with living flowers. In
one comer stood a marble woman, to whom her own
beauty was the sole and sufficient garment. Some pic¬
tures — that looked old, and had a mellow tinge diffused
through all their Artful splendor — hung on the walls.
Near the fireplace was a large and very beautiful cabinet
of ebony, inlaid with ivpry; a piece of antique furniture,
which Mr. Pyncheon had bought in Venice, and which he
used as the treasure-place for medals, ancient coins, and
whatever small and valuable curiosities he had picked up
on his travels. Through all this variety of decoration,
however, the room showed its original characteristics; its
low stud, its cross-beam, its chimney-piece, with the low-
fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it. was the emblem of a
mind industriously stored with foreign ideas, and elabo¬
rated into artificial refinement, but neither larger, nor, in
its proper self, more elegant than before.

There were two objects that appeared rather out of place
in this very handsomely furnished room. One was a
large map, or surveyor’s plan, of a tract of land, which
looked as if it had been drawn a good many years ago, and
was now dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there,
with the touch of fingers. The other was a portrait of a
stern old man, in a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with
a bold effect, and a remarkably strong expression of char*
Bcter.

At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat
Mr. Pyncheon, sipping coffee, which had grown to be a
very favorite beverage with him in France. He was a
middle-aged and really handsome man, with a wig flowing
down upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet,
with lace on the borders and at the button-holes; and the

218 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

firelight glistened on the spacious breadth of his waistcoat,
which was flowered all over with gold. On the entrance
of Scipio, ushering in the carpenter, Mr. Pyncheon turned
partly round, but resumed his former postion, and pro¬
ceeded deliberately to finish his cup of coffee, without im¬
mediate notice of the guest whom he had summoned to his
presence. It was not that he intended any rudeness or
improper neglect, — which, indeed, he would have blushed
to be guilty of, — but it never occurred to him that a per¬
son in Maule’s station had a claim on his courtesy, or
would trouble himself about it one way or the other.

The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth,
and^turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in
the face.

"You sent for me," said he. "Be pleased to explain
your business, that I may go back to my own affairs."

" Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon, quietly. " I did
not mean to tax your time without a recompense. Your
name, I think, is Maule, — Thomas or Matthew Maule,
— a son or grandson of the builder of this house?"

“Matthew Maule," replied the carpenter, — “son of
him who built the house, — grandson of the rightful pro¬
prietor of the soil."

" I know the dispute to which you allude," observed Mr.
Pyncheon with undisturbed equanimity. “I am well
aware that my grandfather was compelled to reset to a
suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the founda*
tion-site of this edifice. We will not, if you please, renew
the dbcussion. The matter was settled at the time, and
by the competent authorities, — equitably, it is to be pre^
sumed, — and, at all events, irrevocably. Yet, singularly
enough, there is an incidental reference to this very sub-

ALICE PYNCHEON

219

ject in what I am now about to say to you. And this
same inveterate grudge, — excuse me, I mean no offence,

— this irritability, which you have just shown, is not en¬
tirely aside from the matter/'

“ If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyn-
cheon," said the carpenter, "in a man's natural resent¬
ment for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to
it I"

" I take you at your word, Goodman Maule," said the
owner of the Seven Gables, with a smile, “ and will proceed
to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments

— justifiable, or otherwise — may have had a bearing on
my affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyn-
cheon family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been
prosecuting a still unsettled claim to a very large extent
of territory at the Eastward?”

"Often,” replied Maule, — and it is said that a smile
came over his face, — "very often, — from my father I"

“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing
a moment, as if to consider what the carpenter's smile
might mean, " appeared to be on the very verge of a set¬
tlement and full allowance, at the period of my grand¬
father's decease. It was well known, to those in his con¬
fidence, that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay.
Now, Colonel Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical
man, well acquainted with public and private business,
and not [at all the person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or
to attempt the following out of an impracticable scheme.
It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he bad grounds,
not apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of
success in the matter of this Eastern claim. In a word,
I believe, — and my legal advisers coincide in the belief,

220 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

which, moreover, is authorized, to a certain extent, by the
family traditions, — that my grandfather was in posses¬
sion of some deed, or other document, essential to this
claim, but which has since disappeared/’

"Very likely,” said Matthew Maule, — and again, it
is said, there was a dark smile on his face, — "but what
can a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of
the Pyncheon family ?”

"Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, — "pos¬
sibly, much!”

Here ensued a great many words between Matthew
Maule and the proprietor of the Seven Gables, on the sub¬
ject which the latter had thus broached. It seems (al¬
though Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in referring to
stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the pop¬
ular belief pointed to some mysterious connection and de¬
pendence, existing between the family of the Maules and
these vast unrealized possessions of the Pyncheons. It
was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged though
he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his
contest with Colonel Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got
possession of the great Eastern claim, in exchange for
an acre or two of garden-ground. A very aged woman,
recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression,
in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon
lands had been shovelled into Maule’s grave; which, by
the by, was but a very shallow nook, between two rocks,
near the summit of Irallows Hill. Again, when the lawyers
were making inquiry for the missing document, it was a
by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wiz«
ard’s skeleton hand. So much weight had the shrewd law<»
yers assigned to these fables, that (but Mr. Pyncheon did

ALICE PYNCHEON

221

oot see fit to inform the carpenter of the fact) they had
secretly caused the wizard’s grave to be searched. Noth*
ing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably,
the right hand of the skeleton was gone.

Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion
of these popular rumors could be traced, though rather
doubtfully and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure
hints of the executed wizard’s son, and the father of this
present Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could
bring an item of his own personal evidence into play.
Though but a child at the time, he either remembered or
fancied that Matthew’s father had had some job to per*
form, on the day before, or possibly the very morning of
the Colonel’s decease, in the private room where he and
the carpenter were at this moment talking. Certain
papers belonging to Colonel Pyncheon, as his grandson
distinctly recollected, had been spread out on the table.

Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.

“My father,” he said, —but still there was that dark
smile, making a riddle of his countenance, — “ my father
was an honester man than the bloody old Colonel I Not
to get his rights back again would he have carried off one
of those papers I ”

“ I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the for*
eign-bred Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “ Nor
will it become me to resent any rudeness towards either
my ^andfather or myself. A gentleman, before seeking
intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will
first consider whether the urgency of the end may com¬
pensate for the disagreeableness of the means. It does
80 in the present instance.”

He then renewed the conversation, and made great

222 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

pecuniary offers to the carpenteri in case the latter should
give information leading to the discovery of the lost doc¬
ument, and the consequent success of the Eastern claim.
For a long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a
cold ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a
strange kind of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon
would make over to him the old wizard’s homestead-
ground, together with the House of the Seven Gables, now
standing on it, in requital of the documentary evidence
so urgently required.

The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copy¬
ing all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows)
here gives an account of some very strange behavior on
the part of Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait. This picture,
it must be understood, was supposed to be so intimately
connected with the fate of the house, and so magically
built into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that
very instant the whole edifice would come thundering
down in a heap of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing
(K)nversation between Mr. Pyncheon and the carpenter,
the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giv¬
ing many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but with¬
out attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists.
And finally, at Matthew Maule’s audacious suggestion of
a transfer of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly por¬
trait is averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown
itself on the point of descending bodily from its frame.
But such incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned
aside.

“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in
amazement at the proposal. “Were I to do so, my
grandfather would not rest quiet in his grave!”

ALICE PTNCHEON

223

"He never has, if all stories are true/* remarked the
carpenter, composedly. "But that matter concerns his
grandson more than it does Matthew Maule. I have no
other terms to propose.”

Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with
Maule’s conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyn-
cheon was of opinion that they might at least be made
matter of discussion. He himself had no personal attach¬
ment for the house, nor any pleasant associations con¬
nected with his childish residence in it. On the contrary,
after seven-and-thirty years, the presence of his dead
grandfather seemed still to pervade it, as on that morning
when the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so ghastly
an aspect, stiffening in his chair. His long abode in for¬
eign parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the
castles and ancestral halls of England, and the marble
palaces of Italy, had caused him to look contemptuously
at the House of the Seven Gables, whether in point of
splendor or convenience. It was a mansion exceedingly
inadequate to the style of living which it would be incum¬
bent on Mr. Fyncheon to support, after realizing his ter¬
ritorial rights. His steward might deign to occupy it, but
never, certainly, the great landed proprietor himself. In
the event of success, indeed, it was his puipose to return
to England; nor, to say the truth, would he recently have
quitted that more congenial home, had not his own for¬
tune, as well as his deceased wife’s, begun to give symptoms
of exhaustion. The Eastern claim once fairly settled, and
put upon the firm basis of actual possession, Mr. Pyn-
cheon’s property — to be measured by miles, not acres
— would be worth an earldom, and would reasonably en¬
title him to solicit, or enable him to purchase, that elevated

224 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

dignity from the British monarch. Lord Pyncheont—<
or the Earl of Waldo! — how could such a magnate be
expected to contract his grandeur within the pitiful com¬
pass of seven shingled gables ?

In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpen¬
ter’s terms appeared so ridiculously easy that Mr. Pyn-
cheon could scarcely forbear laughing in his face. He was
quite ashamed, after the foregoing reflections, to propose
any diminution of so moderate a recompense for the im¬
mense service to be rendered.

"I consent to your proposition, Maule,” cried he.
"Put me in possession of the document essential to estab¬
lish my rights, and the House of the Seven Gables is your
own!”

According to some versions of the story, a regular con¬
tract to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and
signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses. Others
say that Matthew Maule was contented with a private
written agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his
honor and integrity to the fulfilment of the terms con¬
cluded upon. The gentleman then ordered wine, which
he and the carpenter drank together, in confirmation of
their bargain. During the whole preceding discussion
and subsequent formalities, the old Puritan’s portrait
seems to have persisted in its shadowy gestures of dis¬
approval; but without effect, except that, as Mr. Pyn¬
cheon set down the emptied glass, he thought he beheld
his grandfather frown.

" This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected
my brain already,” he observed, after a somewhat star¬
tled look at the picture. "On returning to Europe, I
shall confine myself to the more delicate vintages of Italy

ALICE PYNCHEOK

225

and France, the best of which will not bear transporta¬
tion.”

Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and
wherever he pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if he had
been privy to Mr. Pyncheon’s ambitious projects. ” But
first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost document, I must
crave the favor of a little talk with your fair daughter
Alice.”

“You are mad, Maulel” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon,
haughtily; and now, at last, there was anger mixed up
with his pride. “What can my daughter have to do with
a business like this ? ”

Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter’s part, the
proprietor of the Seven Gables was even more thunder¬
struck than at the cool proposition to surrender his house.
There was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stip¬
ulation ; there appeared to be none whatever for the last.
Nevertheless, Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the
young lady being summoned, and even gave her father
to understand, in a mysterious kind of explanation, —
which made the matter considerably dark^ than it looked
before, — that the only chance of acquiring the requisite
knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a
pure and virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice.
Not to encumber our story with Mr. Pyncheon’s scruples,
whether of conscience, pride, or fatherly affection, he at
length ordered his daughter to be called. He well knew
that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupa¬
tion that could not readily be laid aside; for, as it hap¬
pened, ever since Alice’s name had been spoken, both her
father and the carpenter had heard the sad and sweet
music of her harpsichord, and the airier melanchdly of
her accompanying voice.

226 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

So Alice Pyncheon was summoned and appeared. A
portrait of this young lady^ painted by a Venetian artist,
and left by her father in England, is said to have fallen into
the hands of the present Duke of Devonshire, and to be
now preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of any as¬
sociations with the original, but for its value as a picture,
and the high character of beauty in the countenance. If
ever there was a lady born, and set apart from the world's
vulgar mass by a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was
this very Alice Pyncheon. Yet there was the womanly
mixture in her; the tenderness, or, at least, the tender
capabilities. For the sake of that redeeming quality, a
man of generous nature would have forgiven all her pride,
and have been content, almost, to lie down in her path, and
let Alice set her slender foot upon his heart. All that he
would have required was simply the acknowledgment that
he was indeed a man, and a fellow-being.

As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the car¬
penter, who was standing near its centre, clad in a green
woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees,
and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which pro¬
truded ; it was as proper a mark of the artisan's calling,
as Mr. Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's
aristocratic pretensions. A glow of artistic approval
brightened over Alice Pyncheon's face; she was struck
with admiration — which she made no attempt to conceal
— of the remarkable comeliness, strength, and energy of
Maule's figure. But that admiring glance (which most
other men, perhaps, would have cherished as a sweet rec¬
ollection, all through life) the carpenter never forgave. It
must have been the devil himself that made Maule so sub¬
tile in his perception.

ALICE PYNCHEON

227

"Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?"
thought he, setting his teeth. " She shall know whether
I have a human spirit; and the worse for her, if it prove
stronger than her own I"

"My father, you sent for me," said Alice, in her sweet
and harp-like voice. " But, if you have business with this
young man, pray let me go again. You know I do not
love this room, in spite of that Claude, with which you
try to bring back sunny recollections."

"Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!" said Mat¬
thew Maule. "My business with your father is over.
With yourself, it is now to begin!”

Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.

"Yes, Alice," said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturb¬
ance and confusion. "This young man — his name is
Matthew Maule — professes, so far as I can understand
him, to be able to discover, through your means, a certain
paper or parchment, which was missing long before your
birth. The importance of the document in question ren¬
ders it advisable to neglect no possible, even if improbable,
method of regaining it. You will therefore oblige me, my
dear Alice, by answering this person's inquiries, and com¬
plying with his lawful and reasonable requests, so far as
they may appear to have the aforesaid object in view. As
I shall remain in the room, you need apprehend no rude
nor unbecoming deportment, on the young man’s part;
and, at your slightest wish, of course, the investigation,
or whatever we may call it, shall immediately be broken
off."

"Mistress Alice Pyncheon," remarked Matthew Maule,
with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm
in his look and tone, "will no doubt feel herself quite safe

228 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

in her father's presence, and under his all-sufficient pro¬
tection.”

"I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension,
with my father at hand,” said Alice, with maidenly dig¬
nity. "Neither do I conceive that a lady, while true to
herself, can have aught to fear from whomsoever, or in
any circumstances!”

Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she thus
put herself at once on terms of defiance against a strength
which she could not estimate ?

"Then, Mistress Alice,” said Matthew Maule, handing
a chair, — gracefully enough, for a craftsman, — “will it
please you only to sit down, and do me the favor (though
altogether beyond a poor carpenter's deserts) to fix your
eyes on mine!”

Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting aside
all advantages of rank, this fair girl deemed herself con¬
scious of a power — combined of beauty, high, unsullied
purity, and the preservative force of womanhood — that
could make her sphere impenetrable, unless betrayed by
treachery within. She instinctively knew, it may be,
that some sinister or evil potency was now striving to pass
her barriers; nor would she decline the contest. So Alice
put woman’s might against man’s might; a match not
often equal on the part of woman.

Her father meanwhile had turned away, and seemed
absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape by Claude,
where a shadowy and sun-streaked vista penetrated so
remotely into an ancient wood, that it would have been
no wonder if his fancy had lost itself in the picture’s be¬
wildering depths. But, in truth, the picture was no more
to him at that moment than the blank wall against which

ALICE PTNCHEON

229

it hung. His mind was haunted with the many and
strange tales which he had heard, attributing mysterious
if not supernatural endowments to these Maules, as well
the grandson here present as his two immediate ancestors.
Mr. Pyncheon’s long residence abroad, and intercourse
with men of wit and fashion, — courtiers, worldlings, and
free-thinkers, — had done much towards obliterating the
grim Puritan superstitions, which no man of New England
birth at that early period could entirely escape. But,
on the other hand, had not a whole community believed
Maule’s grandfather to be a wizard ? Had not the crime
been proved? Had not the wizard died for it? Had he
not bequeathed a legacy of hatred against the Pyncheons
to this only grandson, who, as it appeared, was now about
to exercise a subtle influence over the daughter of his
enemy's house? Might not this influence be the same
that was called witchcraft ?

Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule's
figure in the looking-glass. At some paces from Alice,
with his arms uplifted in the air, the carpenter made a ges¬
ture as if directing downward a slow, ponderous, and in¬
visible weight upon the maiden.

"Stay, Maulel" exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping
forward. “I forbid your proceeding further!”

"Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young
man,*' said Alice, without changing her position. "His
efforts, I assure you, will prove very harmless.”

Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the
Claude. It was then his daughter's will, in opposition
to his own, that the experiment should be fully tried.
Henceforth, therefore, he did but consent, not urge it.
^nd was it not for her sake far more than for his own that

260 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

he desired its success ? That lost parchment once restored,
the beautiful Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which
he could then bestow, might wed an English duke or a
German reigning-prince, instead of some New England
clergyman or lawyer! At the thought, the ambitious
father almost consented, in his heart, that, if the devil’s
power were needed to the accomplishment of this great
object, Maule might evoke him. Alice’s own purity
would be her safeguard.

With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr.
Pyncheon heard a half-uttered exclamation from his
daughter. It was very faint and low; so indistinct that
there seemed but half a will to shape out the words, and
too undefined a purport to be intelligible. Yet it was a
call for help! — his conscience never doubted it; — and,
little more than a whisper to his ear, it was a dismal shriek,
and long reechoed so, in the region round his heart I But
this time the father did not turn.

After a further interval, Maule spoke.

"Behold your daughter!” said he.

Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter
was standing erect in front of Alice’s chair, and pointing
his finger towards the maiden with an expression of tri¬
umphant power the limits of which could not be defined,
as, indeed, its scope stretched vaguely towards the unseen
and the infinite. Alice sat in an attitude of profound re¬
pose, with the long brown lashes drooping over her eyes.

"There she is!” eaid the carpenter. "Speak to her!”

"Alice 1 My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon.
"My own Alice!”

She did not stir.

"Louder!” said Maule, smiling.

ALICE PYNCHEON

231

"AliceI Awake!” cried her father. "It troubles me
to see you thus! Awake!”

He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and dose to
that delicate ear which had always been so sensitive to
every discord. But the sound evidently reached her not.
It is indescribable what a sense of remote, dim, unattain¬
able distance, betwixt himself and Alice, was impressed on
the father by this impossibility of reaching her with his
voice.

“Best touch her!” said Matthew Maule. "Shake the
girl, and roughly too! My hands are hardened with too
much use of axe, saw, and plane, — else I might help you!”

Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the
earnestness of startled emotion. He kissed her, with so
great a heart-throb in the kiss, that he thought she must
needs feel it. Then, in a gust of anger at her insensibility,
he shook her maiden form with a violence which, the next
moment, it affrighted him to remember. He withdrew
his encircling arms, and Alice — whose figure, though
flexible, had been wholly impassive — relapsed into the
same attitude as before these attempts to arouse her.
Maule having shifted his position, her face was turned
towards him slightly, but with what seemed to be a ref¬
erence of her very slumber to his guidance.

Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of
conventionalities shook the powder out of his periwig;
how the reserved and stately gentleman forgot his dignity;
how the gold-embroidered waistcoat flickered and glis¬
tened in the firelight with the convulsion of rage, terror,
and sorrow in the human heart that was beating under it.

“Villain!” cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched
fist at Maule. " You and the fiend together have robbed

232 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

me of my daughter 1 Give her back, spawn of the old
wizard, or you shall climb Gallows Hill in your grand¬
father's footsteps 1”

“ Softly, Mr. Pyncheon! ” said the carpenter, with scorn¬
ful composure. “Softly, an it please your worship, else
you will spoil those rich lace ruffles at your wrists! Is it
my crime if you have sold your daughter for the mere
hope of getting a sheet of yellow parchment into your
clutch? There sits Mistress Alice quietly asleep I Now
let Matthew Maule try whether she be as proud as the
carpenter found her awhile since."

He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued,
inward acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards
him, like the flame of a torch when it indicates a gentle
draught of air. He beckoned with his hand, and, rising
from her chair, — blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending
to her sure and inevitable centre, — the proud Alice ap¬
proached him. He waved her back, and, retreating, Alice
sank again into her seat.

“She is mine!" said Matthew Maule. “Mine, by the
nght of the strongest spirit 1"

In the further progress of the legend, there is a long,
grotesque, and occasionally awe-striking account of the
carpenter’s incantations (if so they are to be called), with
a view of discovering the lost document. It appears to
have been his object to convert the mind of Alice into a
kind of telescopic medium, through which Mr. Pyncheon
and himself might obtain a glimpse into the spiritual
world. He succeeded, accordingly, in holding an im¬
perfect sort of intercourse, at one remove, with the de¬
parted personages, in whose custody the so much valued
secret had been carried beyond the precincts of earth.

ALICE PYNCHEON

233

During her trance, Alice described three figures as being
present to her spiritualized perception. One was an aged,
dignified, stern-looking gentleman, clad as for a solemn
festival in grave and costly attire, but with a great blood¬
stain on his richly wrought band; the second, an aged man,
meanly dressed, with a dark and malign countenance,
and a broken halter about his neck; the third, a person
not so advanced in life as the former two, but beyond
the middle age, wearing a coarse woollen tunic and leather
breeches, and with a carpenter’s rule sticking out of his side
pocket. These three visionary characters possessed a
mutual knowledge of the missing document. One of them
in truth, — it was he with the blood-stain on his band, —
seemed, unless his gestures were misunderstood, to hold
the parchment in his immediate keeping, but was pre¬
vented, by his two partners in the mystery, from disbur¬
dening himself of the trust. Finally, when he showed a
purpose of shouting forth the secret, loudly enough to be
heard from his own sphere into that of mortals, his com¬
panions struggled with him, and pressed their hands over
his mouth; and forthwith — whether that he were choked
by it, or that the secret itself was of a crimson hue —
there was a fresh flow of blood upon his band. Upon this,
the two meanly dressed figures mocked and jeered at the
much-abashed old dignitary, and pointed their fingers at
the stain.

At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon.

*’It will never be allowed,” said he. "The custody of
this secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes part of
your grandfather’s retribution. He must choke with it
until it is no longer of any value. And keep you the
House of Seven Gables 1 It is too dear bought an inherit-

234 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

ance, and too heavy with the curse upon it, to be shifted
yet awhile from the Colonel’s posterity!”

Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but — what with fear
and passion — could make only a gurgling murmur in
his throat. The carpenter smiled.

“ Aha, worshipful sir I — so, you have old Maule’s blood
to drink 1” said he, jeeringly.

"Fiend in man’s shape I why dost thou keep dominion
over my child?” cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked
utterance could make way. " Give me back my daughter I
Then go thy ways; and may we never meet again 1”
"Your daughter!” said Matthew Maule. "Why, she
is fairly mine! Nevertheless, not to be too hard with
fair Mistress Alice, 1 will leave her in your keeping; but
I do not warrant you that she shall never have occasion
to remember Maule, the carpenter. ”

He waved his hands with an upward motion; and, after
a few repetitions of similar gestures, the beautiful Alice
Pyncheon awoke from her strange trance. She awoke,
without the slightest recollection of her visionary expe¬
rience ; but as one losing herself in a momentary reverie,
and returning to consciousness of actual life, in almost as
brief an interval as the down-sinking flame of the hearth
should quiver again up the chimney. On recognizing
Matthew Maule, she assumed an air of somewhat cold but
gentle dignity, the rather, as there was a certain peculiar
smile on the carpenter’s visage that stirred the natisre pride
of the fair Alice. *So ended, for that time, the quest for
the lost title-deed of the Pyncheon territory at the East¬
ward ; nor, though often subsequently renewed, has it ever
yet befallen a Pyncheon to set his eye upon that parch¬
ment.

ALICE PYNCHEON

235

But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too haughty
Alice I A power that she little dreamed of had laid its
grasp upon her maiden soul. A will, most unlike her own,
constrained her to do its grotesque and fantastic bidding.
Her father, as it proved, had martyred his poor child to
an inordinate desire for measuring his land by miles in¬
stead of acres. And, therefore, while Alice Pyncheon
lived, she was Maule’s slave, in a bondage more humiliat-
mg, a thousand-fold, than that which binds its chain
around the body. Seated by his humble fireside, Maule
had but to wave his hand; and, wherever the proud lady
chanced to be, — whether in her chamber, or entertaining
her father’s stately guests, or worshipping at church, —
whatever her place or occupation, her spirit passed from
beneath her own control, and bowed itself to Maule.
“ Alice, laugh! ” — the carpenter, beside his hearth, would
say; or perhaps intensely will it, without a spoken word.
And, even were it prayer-time, or at a funeral, Alice must
break into wild laughter. "Alice, be sad!” — and, at
the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all the
mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a bonfire.
" Alice, dance I ” — and dance she would, not in such
courtlike measures as she had learned abroad, but some
high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk
lasses at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to be Maule’s
impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her with any black
or gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her sor¬
rows with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, un¬
generous scorn upon her. Thus all the dignity of life was
lost. She felt herself too much abased, and longed to
change natures with some worm I
One evening, at a bridal-party (but not her own; for.

236 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES"

80 lost from self-control, she would have deemed it sin to
marry), poor Alice was beckoned forth by her unseen des¬
pot, and constrained, in her gossamer white dress and
satin slippers, to hasten along the street to the mean
dwelling of a laboring-man. There was laughter and good
cheer within; for Matthew Maule, that night, was to wed
the laborer’s daughter, and had summoned proud Alice
Pyncheon to wait upon his bride. And so she did; and
when the twain were one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted
sleep. Yet, no longer proud, — humbly, and with a smile
all steeped in sadness, — she kissed Maule’s wife, and
went her way. It was an inclement night; the southeast
wind drove the mingled snow and rain into her thinly shel¬
tered bosom; her satin slippers were wet through and
through, as she trod the muddy sidewalks. The next day
a cold, soon a settled cough; anon, a hectic cheek, a
wasted form, that sat beside the harpsichord, and filled
the house with music! Music, in which a strain of the
heavenly choristers was echoed! Oh, joy I For Alice had
borne her last humiliation! Oh, greater joy 1 For Alice
was penitent of her one earthly sin, and proud no more I
The Fyncheons made a great funeral for Alice. The
kith and kin were there, and the whole respectability of
the town besides. But, last in the procession, came Mat¬
thew Maule, gnashing his teeth, as if he would have bitten
his own heart in twain, — the darkest and wofullest man
that ever walked behind a corpse! He meant to humble
Alice, not to kill her*; but he had taken a woman’s delicate
soul into his rude gripe, to play with — and she was
dead 1

A Corner of the Parlor Showing an Old Harpsichord and Tipleap Table.

XIV

PH(EB£*S GOOD-BY

Holgrave, plunging into his tale with the energy and
absorption natural to a young author, had given a good
deal of action to the parts capable of being developed and
exemplified in that manner. He now observed that a cer¬
tain remarkable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which
the reader possibly feels himself affected) had been flung
over the senses of his auditress. It was the effect, un¬
questionably, of the mystic gesticulations by which he had
sought to bring bodily before Phoebe’s perception the fig¬
ure of the mesmerizing carpenter. With the lids drooping
over her eyes, — now lifted for an instant, and drawn
down again as with leaden weights, — she leaned slightly
towards him, and seemed almost to regulate her breath by
his. Holgrave gazed at her, as he rolled up his manu¬
script, and recognized an incipient stage of that curious
psychological condition, which, as he had himself told
Phoebe, he possessed more than an oi dinary faculty of
producing. A veil was beginning to be muffled about her,
in which she could behold only him, and live only in his
thoughts and emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on
the young girl, grew involuntarily more concentrated; in
his attitude there was the consciousness of power, invest¬
ing his hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not
belong to its physical manifestation. It was evident,
that, with but one wave of his hand and a corresponding

237

238 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

effort of his will, he could complete his masteiy over
Phoebe’s yet free and virgin spirit: he could establish an
influence over this good, pure, and simple child, as
dangerous, and perhaps as disastrous, as that which the
carpenter of his legend had acquired and exercised over
the ill-fated Alice.

To a disposition like Holgrave’s, at once speculative and
active, there is no temptation so great as the opportunity
of acquiring empire over the human spirit; nor any idea
more seductive to a young man than to become the arbiter
of a young girl’s destiny. Let us, therefore, — whatever
his defects of nature and education, and in spite of his
scorn for creeds and institutions, — concede to the
daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of reverence for
another’s individuality. Let us allow him integrity, also,
forever after to be confided in; since he forbade himself
to twine that one link more which might have rendered
his spell over Phoebe indissoluble.

He made a slight gesture upward with his hand.

“You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phoebe 1” he
exclaimed, smiling half-sarcastically at her. “My poor
story, it is but too evident, will never do for Godey or
Graham! Only think of your falling asleep at what I
hoped the newspaper critics would pronounce a most bril¬
liant, powerful, imaginative, pathetic, and original wind¬
ing up! Well, the manuscript must serve to light lamps
with; — if, indeed,^being so imbued with my gentle dul-
ness, it is any longer capable of flame I”

“Me asleep! How can you say so?” answered Phoebe,
as unconscious of the crisis through which she had passed
as an infant of the precipice to the verge of which ithas
lolled. “«No, no I I consider myself as having been very

PH(BBE*S GOOI>^BY

239

Attentive; and, though I don't remember the incidents
quite distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal
of trouble and calamity, — so, no doubt, the story will
prove exceedingly attractive."

By this time the sun had gone down, and was tinting
the clouds towards the zenith with those bright hues which
are not seen there until some time after sunset, and when
the horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy. The moon,
too, which had long been climbing overhead, and unob¬
trusively melting its disk into the azure, — like an am¬
bitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by
assuming the prevalent hue of popular sentiment, — now
began to shine out, broad and oval, in its middle pathway.
These silvery beams were already powerful enough to
change the character of the lingering daylight. They
softened and embellished the aspect of the old house; al¬
though the shadows fell deeper into the angles of its many
gables, and lay brooding under the projecting story, and
within the half-open door. With the lapse of every mo¬
ment, the garden grew more picturesque; the fruit-trees,
shrubbery, and flower-bushes had a dark obscurity among
them. The commonplace characteristics — which, at
noontide, it seemed to have taken a century of sordid life
to accumulate — were now transfigured by a charm of
romance. A hundred mysterious years were whispering
among the leaves, whenever the slight sea-breeze found
its way thither and stirred them. Through the foliage
that roofed the little summer-house the moonlight flickered
to and fro, and fell silvery white on the dark floor, the
table, and the circular bench, with a continual shift and
play, according as the chinks and wayward crevices
among the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer.

240 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish
day, that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling
dews and liquid moonlight, with a dash of icy temper
in them, out of a silver vase. Here and there, a few drops
of this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and
gave it youth again, and sympathy with the eternal youth
of nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the re¬
viving influence fell. It made him feel — what he some¬
times almost forgot, thrust so early as he had been into
the rude struggle of man with man — how youthful he
still was.

“It seems to me," he observed, “that I never watched
the coming of so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything
so very much like happiiit^ss as at this moment. After
all, what a good world we live in 1 How good, and beau¬
tiful! How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten
or age-worn in it! This old house, for example, which
sometimes has positively oppressed my breath with its
smell of decaying timber! And this garden, where the
black mould always clings to my spade, as if I were a sex¬
ton delving in a graveyard ! Could I keep the feeling that
now possesses me, the garden would every day be virgin
soil, with the earth’s first freshness in the flavor of its beans
and squashes; and the house! — it would be like a bower
in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God ever
made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in man’s heart re¬
sponsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and reformers.
And all other refornrand renovation, I suppose, will prove
to be no better than moonshine!’’

“ I have been happier than I am now; at least, much
gayer," said Phoebe, thoughtfully. “ Yet I am sensible of
a great charm in this brightening moonlight; and I love to

PHCBBE’S G00D-B7

241

watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly,
and hates to be called yesterday so soon. I never cared
much about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder,
so beautiful in it, to-night?”

“And you have never felt it before?” inquired the
artist, looking earnestly at the girl through the twilight.

“Never,” answered Phcebe; “and life does not look
the same, now that I have felt it so. It seems as if I had
looked at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight, or else
in the ruddy light of a cheerful fire, glimmering and danc¬
ing through a room. Ah, poor me!” she added, with a
half-melancholy laugh. “I shall never be so merry as
before 1 knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford.
I have grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older,
and, I hope, wiser, and, — not exactly sadder, — but.
certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits!
I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to
give it; but, of course, I cannot both give and keep it.
They are welcome, notwithstanding! ”

“You have lost nothing, Phoebe, worth keeping, nor
which it was possible to keep,” said Holgrave, after a
pause. " Our first youth is of no value; for we are never
conscious of it until after it is gone. But sometimes —
always, 1 suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate
— there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the
heart’s joy at being in love; or, possibly, it may come to
crown some ether grand festival in life, if any other such
there be. This bemoaning of one’s self (as you do now)
over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed,
and this profound happiness at youth regained, — so
much deeper and richer than that we lost, — are essential
to the soul's development. In some cases, the two states

242 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and
the rapture in one mysterious emotion/'

"I hardly think I understand you," said Fhcebe.

"No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for I have
told you a secret which I hardly began to know before I
found myself giving it utterance. Remember it, however;
and when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of
this moonlight scene I"

"It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush
of faint crimson, upward from the west, between those
buildings," remarked Fhcebe. "I must go in. Cousin
Hepzibah is not quick at figures, and will give herself a
headache over the day's accounts, unless I help her."

But Holgrave detained her a little longer.

"Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, "that you re¬
turn to the country in a few days."

"Yes, but only for a little while," answered Fhcebe;
"for I look upon this as my present home. I go to make
a few arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave
of my mother and friends. It is pleasant to live where
one is much desired and very useful; and I think I may
have the satisfaction of feeling myself so here."

"You surely may, and more than you imagine," said
the artist. "Whatever health, comfort, and natural life
exists in the house, is embodied in your person. These
blessings came along with you, and will vanish when you
leave the threshold. Miss Hepzibah, by secluding herself
from society, has logt all true relation with it, and is, in
fact, dead; although she galvanizes herself into a sem¬
blance of life, and stands behind her counter, afflicting the
world with a greatly-to>be-deprecated scowl. Your poor
cousin Clifford is another dead and long-buried person.

FH(EBE'S GOOD-BT

243

on whom the governor and council have wrouf^t a necro¬
mantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crum¬
ble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing
be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hep-
zibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has.
They both exist by you.”

should be very sorry to think so,” answered Phoebe,
gravely. ” But it is true that my small abilities were pre-
cbely what they needed; and I have a real interest in
their welfare, — an odd kind of motherly sentiment, —
which I wish you would not laugh atl And let me tell
you frankly, Mr. Holgrave, I am sometimes puzzled to
know whether you wish them well or ill.”

”Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do feel
an interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden
lady, and this degraded and shattered gentleman, — this
abortive lover of the beautiful. A kindly interest, too,
helpless old children that they are I But you have no con¬
ception what a different kind of heart mine is from your
own. It is not my impulse, as regards these two individ¬
uals, either to help or hinder; but to look on, to analyze,
to explain matters to myself, and to comprehend the
drama which, for almost two hundred years, has been
dragging its slow length over the ground where you and 1
now tread. If permitted to witness the close, I doubt
not to derive a moral satisfaction from it, go matters how
they may. There is a conviction within me that the end
draws nigh. But, though Providence sent you hither
to help, and sends me only as a privileged and meet
spectator, I pledge myself to lend these unfortunate
beings whatever aid I can I”

**1 wish you would speak more plainly,” cried Phmbe^

244 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

perplexed and displeased; "and, above all, that yov
would feel more like a Christian and a human being
How is it possible to see people in distress, without desir
ing, more than anything else, to help and comfort them?
You talk as if this old house were a theatre; and you seem
to look at Hepzibah’s and Clifford’s misfortunes, and those
of generations before them, as a tragedy, such as I have
seen acted in the hall of a country hotel, only the present
one appears to be played exclusively for your amusement.
I do not like this. The play costs the performers too
much, and the audience is too cold-hearted.”

"You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to recognize
a degree of truth in this piquant sketch of his own mood.

"And then,” continued Phcebe, "what can you mean
by your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is
drawing near ? Do you know of any new trouble hanging
over my poor relatives ? If so, tell me at once, and I will
not leave them I”

"Forgive me, Phoebe!” said the daguerreotypist, hold¬
ing out his hand, to which the girl was constrained to
yield her own. “ I am somewhat of a mystic, it must be
confessed. The tendency is in iny blood, together with
the faculty of mesmerism, which might have brought me
to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft. Be¬
lieve me, if I were really aware of any secret, the disclosure
of which would benefit your friends, — who are my own
friends, likewise,—you should learn it before we part.
But 1 have no such knowledge.”

"You hold something back!” said Phoebe.

"Nothing, — no secrets but my own,” answered Hol¬
grave. "1 can perceive, indeed, that Judge Pyncheon
still keeps his eye on Clifford, in whose ruin he had so large

PH(EBE’S OOOD-BY

245

a share. His motives and intentionsi however, are a mys¬
tery to me. He is a determined and relentless man, with
the genuine character of an inquisitor; and had he any
object to gain by putting Clifford to the rack, I verily be¬
lieve that he would wrench his joints from their sockets,
in order to accomplish it. But, so wealthy and eminent
as he is, — so powerful in his own strength, and in the sup¬
port of society on all sides, — what can Judge Pyncheon
have to hope or fear from the imbecile, branded, half-
torpid Clifford?”

“Yet,” urged Phcebe, “you did speak as if misfo^
tune were impending I”

“ Oh, that was because I am morbid! ” replied the ar¬
tist. “My mind has a twist aside, like almost every¬
body’s mind, except your own. Moreover, it is so strange
to find myself an inmate of this old Pyncheon House, and
sitting in this old garden — (hark, how Maule’s well is
murmuring!) — that, were it only for this one circum¬
stance, I cannot help fancying that Destiny is arranging
its fifth act for a catastrophe.”

“There!” cried Phrebe with renewed vexation; for
she was by nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine
to a dark corner. “You puzzle me more than ever!”

“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing her
hand. “ Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely
hate me. You, who love everybody else in the world!”

“Good-by, then,” said Phoebe, frankly. “I do not
mean to be angry a great while, and should be sorry to
have you think so. There has Cousin Hepzibah been
standing in the shadow of the doorway, this quarter of an
hour past I She thinks 1 stay too long in the damp gar¬
den. So, good-night, and good-by!”

246 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

On the second morning thereafter, Phoebe might have
been seen, in her straw bonnet, with a shawl on one arm
and a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding adieu to Hq>-
zibah and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a seat in the
next train of cars, which would transport her to within
half a dozen miles of her country village.

The tears were in Phoebe’s eyes; a smile, dewy with
affectionate regret, was glimmering around her pleasant
mouth. She wondered how it came to pass, that her life
of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old mansion,
had taken such hold of her, and so melted into her asso¬
ciations, as now to seem a more important centre-point
of remembrance than all which had gone before. How
had Hepzibah — grim, silent, and irresponsive to her over¬
flow of cordial sentiment — contrived to win so much
love ? And Clifford, — in his abortive decay, with the
mystery of fearful crime upon him, and the close prison-
atmosphere yet lurking in his breath, — how had he trans¬
formed himself into the simplest child, whom Phcebe felt
bound to watch over, and be, as it were, the providence of
his uDconsidered hours! Everything, at that instant of
farewell, stood out prominently to her view. Look where
she would, lay her hand on what she might, the object
responded to her consciousness, as if a moist human
heart were in it.

She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt
herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black earth,
vitiated with such kn age-long growth of weeds, than joy¬
ful at the idea of again scenting her pine forests and fresh
cloverfields. She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and
the venerable chicken, and threw them some crumbs of
bread from the breakfast-table. These being hastily

PHCEBE'S GOOD-BY

247

gobbled up, the chicken spread its wings, and alighted
close by Phoebe on the window-^ill, where it looked
gravely into her face and vented its emotions in a croak.

Phoebe bade it be a good old chicken during her absence,
and promised to bring it a little bag of buckwheat.

“Ah, Phoebe!” remarked Hepzibah, “you do not smile
30 naturally as when you came to us! Then, the smile
chose to shine out; now, you choose it should. It is well
that you are going back, for a while, into your native air.
The house is too gloomy and lonesome; the shop is full of
vexations; and as for me, I have no faculty of making
things look brighter than they are. Dear Clifford has
been your only comfort I”

“Come hither, Phoebe,” suddenly cried her cousin Clif¬
ford, who had said very little all the morning. “ Close!
— closer! — and look me in the face I ”

Phoebe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his
chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might
peruse it as carefully as he would. It is probable that the
latent emotions of this parting hour had revived, in some
degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled faculties. At any
rate, Phoebe soon felt that, if not the profound insight of
a seer, yet a more than feminine delicacy of appreciation,
was making her heart the subject of its regard. A mo¬
ment before, she had known nothing which she would have
sought to hide. Now, as if some secret were hinted to her
own consciousness through the medium of another’s per¬
ception, she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clif¬
ford’s gaze. A blush, too, — the redder, because she
strove hard to keep it down, — ascended higher and higher,
in a tide of fitful progress, until even her brow was all suf¬
fused with it.

248 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

“It is enough, Phoebe/' said Clifford, with a melan¬
choly smile. " When I first saw you, you were the pret¬
tiest little maiden in the world; and now you have deep¬
ened into beauty I Girlhood has passed into womanhood;
the bud is a bloom! Go, now! — I feel lonelier than I
did.”

Phoebe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed
through the shop, twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew-
drop ; f'^r — considering how brief her absence was to be,
and therefore the folly of being cast down about it — she
would not so far acknowledge her tears as to dry them
with her handkerchief. On the doorstep, she met the lit¬
tle urchin whose marvellous feats of gastronomy have been
recorded in the earlier pages of our narrative. She took
from the window some specimen or other of natural his¬
tory, — her eyes being too dim with moisture to inform
her accurately whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus,
— put it into the child’s hand, as a parting gift, and went
her way. Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his
door, with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and,
trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep company
with Phoebe, so far as their paths lay together; nor, in
spite of his patched coat and rusty beaver, and the curious
fashion of his tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her
heart to outwalk him.

“ We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,” observed
the street philosopher. “It is unaccountable how little
while it takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man
as his own breath; and, begging your pardon. Miss Phoebe
(though there can be no offence in an old man’s saying it),
that's just what you’ve grown to me! My years have
been a great many, and your life is but just beginning;

PH(BBE’S GOOD-BY

249

and yet, you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had
found you at my mother’s door, and you had blossomed,
like a running vine, all along my pathway since. Come
back soon, or 1 shall be gone to my farm; for I begin to
6nd these wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for my back¬
ache.”

" Very soon. Unde Venner,” replied Phoebe.

"And let it be all the sooner, Phoebe, for the sake of
those poor souls yonder,” continued her companion.
“They can never do without you, now, — never, Phoebe,
never I — no more than if one of God’s angels had been
living with them, and making their dismal house pleasant
and comfortable I Don’t it seem to you they’d be in a
sad case, if, some pleasant summer morning like this, the
angel should spread his wings, and fly to the place he came
from? Well, just so they feel, now that you’re going
home by the railroad! They can’t bear it. Miss Phoebe;
so be sure to come back!”

“I am no angel, Uncle Venner,” said Phoebe, smiling,
as she offered him her hand at the street-corner. “ But,
1 suppose, people never feel so much like angels as when
they are doing what little good they may. So I shall
certainly come back I ”

Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phoebe
took the wings of the morning, and was soon flitting al¬
most as rapidly away as if endowed with the aerial loco¬
motion of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so gra¬
ciously compared her.

XV

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

Several days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily
and drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the whole
gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circum-
srtance of Phcebe’s departure), an easterly storm had set
in, and indefatigably applied itself to the task of making
the black roof and walls of the old house look more cheer¬
less than ever before, ^et was the outside not half so
cheerless as the interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at
once, from all his scanty resources of enjoyment. Phoebe
was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the floor.
The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping
foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered
at. Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmos¬
phere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, ex¬
cept the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the
great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from
drought, in the angle between the two front gables.

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with
the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another
phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the east
wind itself, grim ftnd disconsolate, in a rusty black alk
gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.
The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad
that she soured her small beer and other damageable com¬
modities, by scowling on them. It is, perhaps, true that
* 250

The Old Fireplace in the Kitchen.
Notice the brick oven and heavy iron kettle&

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

251

the public had something reasonably to complain of in her
deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither ill-
tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than
always, had it been possible to make it reach him. The
inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old
gentlewoman. She could do little else than sit silently
in a comer of the room, when the wet pear-tree branches,
sweeping across the small windows, created a noon-day
dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her
woe-begone aspect. It was no fault of Hepzibah’s.
Everything — even the old chairs and tables, that had
known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes
as her own — looked as damp and chill as if the pres¬
ent were their worst experience. The picture of the
Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall. The house itself
shivered, from every attic of its seven gables, down to the
great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an
emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built for
warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.

Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the
parlor. But the storm-demon kept watch above, and,
whenever a fiame was kindled, drove the smoke back
again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own
breath. Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable
storm, Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied
his customary chair. On the morning of the fifth, when
summoned to breakfast, he responded only by a broken¬
hearted murmur, expressive of a determination not to
leave his bed. His sister made no attempt to change his
purpose. In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah
could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty
so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties — of seek-

252 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

ing pastime for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical
and fastidious, without force or volition. It was, at least,
something short of positive despair, that, to-day, she might
sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief,
and unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of
her fellow-sufferer.

But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his ap¬
pearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in
quest of amusement. In the course of the forenoon, Hep-
zibah heard a note of music, which (there being no other
tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven Gables)
she knew must proceed from Alice Fyncheon’s harpsi¬
chord. She was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had
possessed a cultivated taste for music, and a considerable
degree of skill in its practise. It was difficult, however, to
conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to which daily
exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the
sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain,
that now stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvellous
that the long-silent instrument should be capable of so
much melody. Kepzibah involuntarily thought of the
ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which
were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, per¬
haps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers,
that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap
asunder with their own vibrations, and the music ceased.

But a harsher sound succeeded tc* the mysterious
notes; nor was the'easterly day fated to pass without an
event sufiicient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clif¬
ford, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming¬
birds along with it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon’s
performanpe (or Clifford’s, if his we must consider it) were

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

253

driven away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ring¬
ing of the shop-bell. A foot was heard scraping itself on
the threshold, and thence somewhat ponderously step¬
ping on the floor. Hepzibah delayed a moment, while
muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her
defensive armor in a forty years’ warfare against the
east wind. A characteristic sound, however, — neither a
cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and reverberat¬
ing spasm in somebody’s capacious depth of chest, — im¬
pelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of flerce faint¬
heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous
emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever
looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah. But
the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him, stood
up his- umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage
of composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which
his appearance had excited.

Hepzibah’s presentiment had not deceived her. It was
no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying
the front door, had now effected his entrance into the
shop.

“ How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah ?—and how does this
most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?” began
the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the east¬
erly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little
mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile. "I
could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether
I can in any manner promote his comfort, or your own.”

“You can do nothing,” said Hepzibah, controlling
her agitation as well as she could. “ I devote myself to
Clifford. He has every comfort which his situation
admits of.”

254 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

But'allow me to suggest, dear cousin/’ rejoined the
Judge, “you err, — in all affection and kindness, no doubt,
and with the very best intentions, — but you do err,
nevertheless, in keeping your brother so secluded. Why
insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness ? Clif¬
ford, alas! has had too much of solitude. Now let him
try society, — the society, that is to say, of kindred and
old friends. Let me, for instance, but see Clifford, and
I will answer for the good effect of the interview.”

“You cannot see him,” answered Hepzibah. “Clifford
has kept his bed since yesterday.”

“WhatI How! Is he ill?” exclaimed Judge Pyn-
cheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm;
for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the
room as he spoke. “ Nay, then, I must and will sec him I
What if he should die ? ”

" He is in no danger of death,” said Hepzibah, — and
added, with bitterness that she could repress no longer,
“none; unless he shall be persecuted to death, now, by
the same man who long ago attempted it!”

“Cousin Hepzibah,” said the Judge, with an impres¬
sive earnestness of manner, which grew even to tearful
pathos as he proceeded, “is it possible that you do not
perceive how unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this
constant, this long-continued bitterness against me, for a
part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by
the force of law, and at my own peril, 1o act? Wiiat did
I do, in detriment *to Clifford, which it was possible to
leave undone ? How could you, his sister, — if, for your
never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine, you had
known what I did, — have shown greater tenderness?
And do ypu think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

255

— that it has left no anguish in my bosom, from that day
to this, amidst all the prosperity with which Heaven has
blessed me ? — or that I do not now rejoice, when it is
deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the
welfare of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend,
this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted, —
so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and forbear to say,
so guilty, — that our own Clifford, in fine, should be given
back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment? Ah, you
little know me. Cousin Hepzibahl You little know this
heart! It now throbs at the thought of meeting him!
There lives not the human being (except yourself, — and
you not more than I) who has shed so many tears for Clif¬
ford’s calamity! You behold some of them now. There
is none who would so delight to promote his happiness!
Try me, Hepzibah 1 — try me, cousin I — try the man
whom you have treated as your enemy and Clifford’s!

— try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find him true, to
the heart’s core! ”

"In the name of Heaven,” cried Hepzibah, provoked
only to intenser indignation by this outgush of the inesti¬
mable tenderness of a stern nature, — “ in God’s name,
whom you insult, and whose power I could almost ques¬
tion, since he hears you utter so many false words without
palsying your tongue, — give over, I beseecli you, this
loathsome pretence of affection for your victim! You
hate him! Say so, like a man! You cherish, at this mo¬
ment, some black purpose against him in your heart!
Speak it out, at once! — or, if you hope so to promote it
better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But
never speak again of your love for my poor brother I I
cannot bear it! It will drive me beyond a woman’s de-

256 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

cency! It will drive me mad I Forbear I Not another
word I It will make me spurn youl*'

For once, Hepzibah’s wrath had given her courage.
She had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquerable
distrust of Judge Pyncheon’s integrity, and this utter de¬
nial, apparently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human
sympathies, — were they founded in any just perception
of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's un¬
reasonable prejudice, deduced from nothing?

The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent
respectability. The church acknowledged it; the state
acknowledged it. It was denied by nobody. In all the
very extensive sphere of those who knew him, whether in
his public or private capacities, there was not an individ¬
ual — except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like
the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political oppo¬
nents — who would have dreamed of seriously disputing
his claim to a high and honorable place in the world's
regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice to say)
did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or
very frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation ac¬
corded with his deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually
considered the surest witness to a man's integrity, — his
conscience, unless it might be for the little space of five
minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some
black day in the whole year's circle, — his conscience bore
an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice.
And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should
hestitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that
the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that
poor Hepzibah, with her solitary prejudice, was wrong.
Hidden from mankind, — forgotten by liimself, or buried

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

267

so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of os¬
tentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it,
— there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing.
Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily
guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed,
and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood¬
stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every
moment being aware of it'.

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a
hard texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of falling
into mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to
whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field
of action lies among the external phenomena of life. They
possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and ap¬
propriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities,
such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument,
and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds
of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of
this class builds up, as it were, a tali and stately edifice,
which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his
own view, is no other than the man’s character, or the man
himself. Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls,
and suites of spacious apartments, are floored with a mo¬
saic-work of costly marbles; its windows, the whole height
of each room, admit the sunshine through the most trans¬
parent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and its
ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome — through
which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to
the sky, as with no obstructing medium between — sur¬
mounts the whole. With what fairer and nobler emblem
could any man desire to shadow forth his character ? Ah 1
but in some low and obscure nook, — some narrow closet

258 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

on the ground-floor, shut, locked and boltedf and the ke^
flung away, — or beneath the marble pavement, in a stag¬
nant water-puddle, with the richest pattern of mosaic-
work above, — may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still
decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the pal¬
ace I The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has
long been his daily breath! Neither will the visitors, for
they smell only the rich odors which the master sedulously
scatters through the palace, and the incense which they
bring, and delight to burn before himl Now and then,
perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye
the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the
hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned
over its forgotten door, or the deadly hole under the pave¬
ment, and the decaying corpse within. Here, then, we
are to seek the true emblem of the man’s character, and
of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his
life. And, beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool
of stagnant water, foul with many impurities, and, per¬
haps, tinged with blood,—that secret abomination, above
which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without remem¬
bering it,—is this man’s miserable soul!

To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely
to Judge Pyncheon. We might say (without in the least
imputing crime to a personage of his eminent respectabil¬
ity) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life
to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile con¬
science than the Judge was ever troubled with. The pur¬
ity of his judicial character, while on the bench; the faith¬
fulness of his public service in subsequent capacities; his
devotedness to his party, and the rigid consistency with
which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all events,

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

259

kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable
zeal as president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable
integrity as treasurer of a widow’s and orphan’s fund; his
benefits to horticulture, by producing two much-esteemed
varieties of the pear, and to agriculture, through the
agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his
moral deportment, for a great many years past; the se«
verity with which he had frowned upon, and finally cast
off, an expensive and dissipated son, delaying forgiveness
until within the final quarter of an hour of the young man’s
life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces at
meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance
cause; his confining himself, since the last attack of the
gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy
whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the hand¬
someness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy
fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, and,
in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equip¬
ment ; the scrupulousness with which he paid public no¬
tice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or
a motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaint¬
ances, rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence where¬
with he made it a point to gladden the whole world, —
what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a
portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper
face was what he beheld in the looking-glass. This ad¬
mirably arranged life was what he was conscious of in the
progress of every day. Then, might not he claim to be
its result and sum, and say to himself and the community,
“Behold Judge Pyncheon there”?

And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early
and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong

260 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

act, — or that, even now, the inevitable force of circum¬
stances should occasionally make him do one questionable
deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blame¬
less ones, — would you characterize the Judge by that
one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let
it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime ? What is there
so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it
should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were
heaped into the other scale 1 This scale and balance sys¬
tem is a favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon's
brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus unfortunately sit¬
uated, seldom or never looking inward, and resolutely
taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his
image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can
scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss
of property and reputation. Sickness will not always
help him do it; not always the death-hour!

But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood
confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah’s wrath.
Without premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed
terror, she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of
her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty
years.

Thus far the Judge’s countenance had expressed mild
forbearance, — grave and almost gentle deprecation of
his cousin’s unbecoming violence, — free and Christian-
like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by her words. But
when those words* were irrevocably spoken his look as¬
sumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable
resolve; and this with so natural and imperceptible a
change, tiiat it seemed as if the iron man had stood there
from th^ first, and the meek man not at all. The effect

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

261

was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their soft col¬
oring, suddenly vanish from the stony hrow of a precipi¬
tous mountain, and leave there the frown which you at
once feel to be eternal. Hepzibah almost adopted the
insane belief that it was her old Puritan ancestor, and not
the modem Judge, on whom she had just been wreaking
the bitterness of her heart. Never did a man show
stronger proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge
Pyncheon, at this crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance
to the picture in the inner room.

"Cousin Hepzibah," said he, very calmly, "it is time to
have done with this."

“With all my heart!" answered she. “Then, why do
you persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford and
me in peace. Neither of us desires anything better!"

“It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this
house," continued the Judge. “Do not act like a mad¬
woman, Hepzibah! I am his only friend, and an all-
powerful one. Has it never occurred to you, — are you
so blind as not to have seen, — that, without not merely
my consent, but my efforts, my representations, the exer¬
tion of my whole influence, political, official, personal,
Clifford would never have been what you call free ? Did
you think his release a triumph over me? Not so, my
good cousin; not so, by any means! The furthest pos¬
sible from that I No; but it was the accomplishment of
a pur];)ose long entertained on my part. I set him free I"

“You!” answered Hepzibah. “I never will believe
it! He owed his dungeon to you; his freedom to God's
providence!"

"I set him free!" reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with
the calmest composure. “ And 1 came hither now to de-

262 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEK^ GABLES

dde whether he shall retain his freedom. It will depend
upon himself. For this purpose, I must see him."

" Never! — it would drive him mad!" exclaimed Hepzi-
bah, but with an irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to
the keen eye of the Judge; for, without the slightest faith
in his good intentions, she knew not whether there was
most to dread in yielding or resistance. " And why should
you wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains
hardly a fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that
from an eye which has no love in it?"

“He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!" said
the Judge, with well-grounded confidence in the benignity
of his aspect. “But, Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a
great deal, and very much to the purpose. Now, listen,
and I will frankly explain my reasons for insisting on this
interview. At the death, thirty years since, of our uncle
Jaifrey, it was found, — I know not whether the circum¬
stance ever attracted much of your attention, — but
it was found that his visible estate, of every kind, fell far
short of any estimate ever made of it. He was supposed
to be immensely rich. Nobody doubted that he stood
among the weightiest men of his day. It was one of his
eccentricities, however, — and not altogether a folly,
neither, — to conceal the amount of his property by mak¬
ing distant and foreign investments, perhaps under other
names than his own, and by various means, familiar
enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be specified.
By Uncle Jaifrey's last will and testament, as you are
aware, his entire property was bequeathed to me, with the
single exception of a life interest to yourself in this old
family mansion, and the strip of patrimonial estate re¬
maining attached to it."

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

263

**Aiid do you seek to deprive us of that?” asked Hep*
zibah, unable to restrain her bitter contempt. “Is this
your price for ceasing to persecute poor Clifford?”

“ Certainly not, my dear cousin! ” answered the Judge,
smiling benevolently. “On the contrary, as you must
do me the justice to own, I have constantly expressed my
readiness to double or treble your resources, whenever you
should make up your mind to accept any kindness of that
nature at the hands of your kinsman. No, no I But here
iies the gist of the matter. Of my uncle's unquestionably
great estate, as I have said, not the half — no, not one
third, as I am fully convinced — was apparent after his
death. Now, I have the best possible reasons for believ¬
ing that your brother Clifford can give me a clew to the
recovery of the remainder.”

“ Clifford! — Clifford know of any hidden wealth ? —
Clifford have it in his power to make you rich ? ” cried the
old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like
ridicule, at the idea. “Impossible! You deceive your¬
self I It is really a thing to laugh at I ”

“ It is as certain as that 1 stand here!” said Judge Pyn-
cheon, striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at
the same time stamping his foot, as if to express his con¬
viction the more forcibly by the whole emphasis of his
substantial person. “ Clifford told me so himself!”

“ No, no I ” exclaimed Hepzibah, incredulously. “ You
are dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey I”

“1 do not belong to the dreaming class of men,” said
the Judge, quietly. “Some months before my uncle's
death, Clifford boasted to me of the possession of the secret
of incalculable wealth. His purpose was to taunt me,
and excite my curiosity. I know it well. But, from a

264 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

pretty distinct recollection of the particulars of our con¬
versation, I am thoroughly convinced that there was truth
in what he said. Clifford, at this moment, if he chooses,
— and choose he must! — can inform me where to find
the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever
shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's
missing property. He has the secret. His boast was no
idle word. It had a directness, an emphasis, a particu¬
larity, that showed a backbone of solid meaning within
the mystery of his expression.’’

'*But what could have been Clifford’s object,” asked
Hepzibah, “in concealing it so long?”

“It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature,”
replied the Judge, turning up his eyes. “He looked upon
me as his enemy. He considered me as the cause of his
overwhelming disgrace, his imminent peril of death, his
irretrievable ruin. There was no great probability, there¬
fore, of his volunteering information, out of his dungeon,
that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of pros¬
perity. But the moment has now come when he must
give up his secret.”

“And what if he should refuse?” inquired Hepzibah.
“ Or, — as I steadfastly believe, — what if he has no
knowledge of this wealth?”

“My dear cousin,” said Judge Pyncheon, with a quie¬
tude which he had the power of making more formidable
than any violence, “since your brothf'r’s return, I have
taken the precaution (a highly proper one in the near kins¬
man and natural guardian of an individual so situated)
to have his deportment and habits constantly and care¬
fully overlooked. Your neighbors have been eye-wit¬
nesses to whatever has passed in the garden. The butcher.

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

265

the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers of your
3 hop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several
of the secrets of your interior. A still larger circle—I
myself, among the rest — can testify to his extravagances
at the arched window. Thousands beheld him, a week
or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence into the
street. From all this testimony, I am led to apprehend
— reluctantly, and with deep grief — that Clifford’s mis¬
fortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong,
that he cannot safely remain at large. The alternative,
you must be aware, — and its adoption will depend en¬
tirely on the decision which 1 am now about to make, —
tlie alternative is his confinement, probably for the remain¬
der of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his unfor¬
tunate state of mind.”

“ Yoii cannot mean it! ” shrieked Hepzibah.

Should my cousin Clifford,” continued Judge Pyn-
cheon, wholly undisturbed, "from mere malice, and hatred
of one whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him,
^ a mode of passion that, as often as any other, indicates
mental disease, — should he refuse me the information
so important to myself, and which he assuredly possesses,
I shall consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy
my mind of his insanity. And, once sure of the course
pointed out by conscience, you know me too well. Cousin
Hepzibah, to entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.”

"O, Jaffrey,—Cousin Jeffrey!” cried Hepzibah,
mournfully, not passionately, " it is you that are diseased
in mind, not Clifford! You have forgotten that a woman
was your mother I — that you have had sisters, brothers,
children of your own I — or that there ever was affection
between man and man, or pity from one man to another.

266 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

in this miserable world I Else, how could you have
dreamed of this? You are not young, Cousin Jaffreyl
no, nor middle-aged, — but already an old man I The
hair is white upon your head I How many years have you
to live? Are you not rich enough for that little time?
Shall you be hungry, — shall you lack clothes, or a roof
to shelter you, — between this point and the grave ? No I
but, with the half of what you now possess, you could revel
in costly food and wines, and build a house twice as splen¬
did as you now inhabit, and make a far greater show to
the world, — and yet leave riches to your only son, to make
him bless the hour of your death I Then, why should you
do this cruel, cruel thing ? — so mad a thing, that I know
not whether to call it wicked I Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this
hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two
hundred years. You are but doing over again, in another
shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending
down to your posterity the curse inherited from him!”

“Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed
the Judge, with the impatience natural to a reasonable
man, on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above,
in a discussion about matters of business. “1 have told
you my determination. I am not apt to change. Clifford
must give up his secret or take the consequences. And
let him decide quickly; for I have several affairs to attend
to this morning, and an important dinner engagement with
some political friends.”

“Clifford has no*secret!” answered Hepzibah. “And
God will not let you do the thing you meditate 1”

“We shall see,” said the unmoved Judge. “Mean¬
while, choose whether you will summon Clifford, and allow
this busix^ss to be amicably settled by an interview be-

THE SCOWL AND SMILE

267

tween two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures,
which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in
avoiding. The responsibility is altogether on your part.**

"You are stronger than I," said Hepzibah, after a brief
consideration; “and you have no pity in your strength!
Clifford is not now insane; but the interview which you
insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless,
knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to
allow you to judge for youself as to the improbability of his
possessing any valuable secret. I will call Clifford. Be
merciful in your dealings with him I — be far more mer¬
ciful than your heart bids you be! — for God is looking at
you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!”

The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the
foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and
dung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair.
Many a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious
arms: rosy children, after their sports; young men,
dreamy with love; growm men, weary with cares; old
men, burdened with winters, — they had mused, and slum¬
bered, and departed to a yet profounder sleep. It had
been a long tradition, though a doubtful one, that this
was the very chair, seated in which, the earliest of the
Judge’s New England forefathers — he whose picture still
hung upon the wall — had given a dead man’s silent and
stern reception to the throng of distinguished guests.
From' that hour of evil omen until the present, it may be,
— though we know not the secret of his heart, — but it
may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk
into the chair tlian this same Judge Pyncheon, whom
we have just beheld so immitigably hard and resolute.
Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he had

268 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

thus fortified his soul with iron. Such calmness is a
mightier effort than the violence of weaker men. And
there was yet a heavy task for him to do. Was it a
little matter, — a trifle to be prepared for in a single
moment, and to be rested from in another moment,
— that he must now, after thirty years, encounter a kins¬
man risen from a living tomb, and wrench a secret from
him, or else consign him to a living tomb again ?

**Did’you speak?’* asked Hepzibah, looking in from the
threshold of the parlor; for she imagined that the Judge
had uttered some sound which she was anxious to inter¬
pret as a relenting impulse. '*1 thought you called me
back.”

"No, no I” gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon, with a
harsh frown, while his brow grew almost a black purple,
in the shadow of the room. " Why should 1 call you back ?
Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!”

The Judge had taken his watch from his vest-pocket
and now held it in his hand, measuring the interval which
was to ensue before the appearance of Clifford.

XVI

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER

Never had the old house appeared so dismal to poor
Hepzibah as when she departed on that wretched errand.
There was a strange aspect in it. As she trode along the
foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door after an¬
other, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wist¬
fully and fearfully around. It would have been no mar¬
vel, to her excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had
been the rustle of dead people’s garments, or pale visages
awaiting her on the landing-place above. Her nerves
were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terror through
which she had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge
Pyncheon, who so perfectly represented the person and
attributes of the founder of the family, had called back
the dreary past. It weighed upon her heart. Whatever
she had heard, from legendary aunts and grandmothers,
concerning the good or evil fortunes of the Pyncheons, —
stories which had heretofore been kept warm in her re¬
membrance by the chimney-corner glow that was asso¬
ciated with them, — now recurred to her, sombre, ghastly,
cold, like most passages of family history, when brooded
over in melancholy mood. The whole seemed little else
but a series of calamity, reproducing itself in successive
generations, witli one general hue, and varying in little^
save the outline. But Hepzibah now felt as if the Judge,
and Clifford, and herself, — they three together, — were

269

270 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

on the point of adding another incident to the annals of
the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and sorrow, which
would cause it to stand out from all the rest. Thus it is
that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an
individuality, and a character of climax, which it is des¬
tined to lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray
tissue common to the grave or glad events of many years
ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that any¬
thing looks strange or startling, — a truth that has the
bitter and the sweet in it.

But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of some¬
thing unprecedented at that instant passing and soon to
be accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. Instinc¬
tively she paused before the arched window, and looked
out upon the street, in order to seize its permanent objects
with her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the
reel and vibration which affected her more immediate
sphere. It brought her up, as we may say, with a kind of
shock, when she beheld everything under the same appear¬
ance as the day before, and numberless preceding
days, except for the difference between sunshine and sullen
storm. Her eyes travelled along the street, from doorstep
to doorstep, noting the wet sidewalks, with here and there
a puddle in hollows that had been imperceptible until
filled with water. She screwed her dim optics to their
acutest point, in the hope of making out, with greater
distinctness, a certain window, where she half saw, half
guessed, that a tailor’s seamstress was sitting at her work.
Hepzibah flung herself upon that unknown woman’s
companionship, even thus far off. Then she was at¬
tracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched its moist
and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until it had

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER

271

turned the comer, and refused to carry any further her idly
trifling, because appalled and overburdened, mind. When
the vehicle had disappeared, she allowed herself still an¬
other loitering moment; for the patched figure of good Un¬
de Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the head
of the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the
east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibah wished that
he would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shivering
solitude a little longer. Anything that would take her
out of the grievous present, and interpose human beings
betwixt herself and what was nearest to her, — whatever
would defer for an instant, the inevitable errand on which
she was bound, — all such impediments were welcome.
Next to the lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most
playful.

Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain
and far less for what she must inflict on Clifford. Of so
slight a nature, and so shattered by his previous calam¬
ities, it could not well be short of utter ruin to bring him
face to face with the hard, relentless man, who had been
his evil destiny through life. Even had there been no
bitter recollections, nor any hostile interest now at stake
between tliem, the mere natural repugnance of the more
sensitive system to the massive, weight^'’, and unimpres-
sible one, must, in itself, have been disastrous to the for¬
mer. It would be like flinging a porcelain vase, with al¬
ready a crack in it, against a granite column. Never be¬
fore had Hepzibah so adequately estimated the powerful
character of her cousin Jaffrey, — powerful by intellect,
energy of will, the long habit of acting among men, and,
as she believed, by his unscrupulous ptirsuit of selfish ends
through evil means. It did but increase the difiiculty

272 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

that Judge Pyucheon was under a delusion as to the
secret which he supposed Clifford to possess. Men of
his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if they
chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters,
so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true,
that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult
than pulling up an oak. Thus, as the Judge required an
impossibility of Clifford, the latter, as he could not per¬
form it, must needs perish. For what, in the grasp of a
man like this, was to become of Clifford’s soft poetic nar
ture, that never should have had a task more stubborn
than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and
rhythm of musical cadences! Indeed, what had become
of it alreaoy ? Broken I Blighted I All but annihilated!
Soon to be wholly so 1

For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah’s mind,
whether Clifford might not really have such knowledge of
their deceased uncle’s vanished estate as the Judge im^
puted to him. She remembered some vague intimations,
on her brother’s part, which — if the supposition were
not essentially preposterous — might have been so inter¬
preted. There had been schemes of travel and residence
abroad, day-dreams of brilliant life at home, and splendid
castles in the air, which it would have required boundless
wealth to build and realize. Had this wealth been in her
power, how gladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all
upon her iron-hearted kinsman, to buy for Clifford the
freedom and seclusion of the desolate old house! But
she believed that her brother's schemes were as destitute
of actual substance and purpose as a child’s pictures of
its future life, while sitting in a little chair by its mother's
knee. Clifford had none but shadowy gold at his com-

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 273

mand; and it was not the stuff to satisfy Judge Pyn-
cheon!

Was there no help, in their extremity? It seemed
strange that there should be none, with a city round about
her. It would be so easy to throw up the window, and
send forth a shriek, at the strange agony of which every¬
body would come hastening to the rescue, well under¬
standing it to be the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful
crisis! But how wild, how almost laughable, the fatality,
— and yet how continually it comes to pass, thought
Hepzibah, in this dull delirium of a world, — that who¬
soever, and with however kindly a purpose, should come
to help, they would be sure to help the strongest side I
Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are en¬
dowed with irresistible attraction. There would be Judge
Pyncheon, — a person eminent in the public view, of high
station arid great wealth, a philanthropist, a member of
Congress and of the church, and intimately associated
with whatever else bestows good name, — so imposing,
in these advantageous lights, that Hepzibah herself could
hardly help shrinking from her own conclusions as to his
hollow integrity. The Judge, on one side! And who, on
the other ? The guilty Clifford! Once a by-word 1 Now,
an indistinctly remembered ignominy I

Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge
would draw all human aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah
was so unaccustomed to act for herself, that the least word
of counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action.
Little Phoebe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up
the whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet
simply by the warm vivacity of her character. The idea
of the artist occurred to Hepzibah. Young and unknown,^

274 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

mere vagrant adventurer as he was, she had been consdous
of a force in Holgrave which might well adapt him to be
the champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind,
she unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but
which had served as a former medium of communication
between her own part of the house and the gable where
the wandering daguerreotypist had now established his
temporary home. He was not there. A book, face down¬
ward, on the table, a roll of manuscript, a half-written
sheet, a newspaper, some tools of his present occupation,
and several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an im¬
pression as if he were close at hand. But, at this period
of the day, as Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist
was at his public rooms. With an impulse of idle curios¬
ity, that flickered among her heavy thoughts, she looked
at one of the daguerreotypes, and beheld Judge Pyncheon
frowning at her. Fate stared her in the face. She turned
back from her fruitless quest, with a heart-sinking sense
of disappointment. In all her years of seclusion, she had
never felt, as now, what it was to be alone. It seemed as
if the house stood in a desert, or, by some spell, was made
invisible to those who dwelt around, or passed beside it;
so that any mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or
crime might happen in it without the possibility of aid.
In her grief and wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her
life in divesting herself of friends; she had wilfully cast
off the support which God has ordained his creatures to
need from one another; and it was now her punishment,
that Clifford and herself would fall the easier victims to
their kindred enemy.

Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,
— scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER

275

Heaven I — and strove hard to send up a prayer through
the dense gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had
gathered, as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of hu¬
man trouble, doubt, confusion, and chill indifference, be¬
tween earth and the better regions. Her faith was too
weak; the prayer too heavy to be thus uplifted. It fell
back, a lump of lead, upon her heart. It smote her with
the wretched conviction' that Providence intermeddled
not in these petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow,
nor had any balm for these little agonies of a solitary soul;
but shed its justice, and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike
sweep, over half the universe at once. Its vastness made
it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there
comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so
comes a love-beam of God’s care and pity for every
separate need.

At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the tor¬
ture that she was to inflict on Clifford, — her reluctance
to which was the true cause of her loitering at the niindow,
her search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,
— dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyn-
cheon from below stairs, chiding her delay, — she crept
slowly, a pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of
woman, with almost torpid limbs, slowly to her brother’s
door, and knocked 1

There was no reply I

And how should there have been? Her hand, trem¬
ulous with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had
smitten so feebly against the door that the sound could
hardly have gone inward. She knocked again. Still, no
response I Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck
with the entire force of her heart’s vibration, communi-

276 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

eating, by some subtile magnetism, her own terror to the
summons. ClifiFord would turn his face to the pillow, and
cover his head beneath the bedclothes, like a startled child
at midnight. She knocked a third time, three regular
strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning
in them; for, modulate it with what cautious art we will,
the hand cannot help playing some tune of what we feel,
upon the senseless wood.

Clifford returned no answer.

"CliffordI dear brother!** said Hepzibah. "Shall )
come in?**

A silence.

Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated hi*
name, without result; till, thinking her brother*s sleep
unwontedly profound, she undid the door, and entering,
found the chamber vacant. How could he have come
forth, and when, without her knowledge ? Was it possible
that, in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the
irksomeness within doors, he had betaken himself to his
customary haunt in the garden, and was now shivering
under the cheerless shelter of the summer-house? She
hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head
and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole
garden through, as completely as her dim vision would al¬
low. She could see the interior of the summer-house,
and its circular seat, kept moist by the droppings of the
roof. It had no occupant. Clifford was not thereabouts;
unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a mo¬
ment, Hepzibah fancied might be the case) into a great,
wet mass of tangled and broad-leaved shadow, where the
squash-vines were clambering tumultuously upon an old
wooden framework, set casually aslant against the fence

The Fireplace in the Room Used by Hawthorne in the House

OP THE Seven Gables.

Over the fireplace Is an old oil painting. At the right is the door
to the china closet which Is filled with rare pieces of quaint china
and queerly shaped ginger jars.

The woodwork is painted white In accordance with colonial cus¬
tom.

CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER

277

This could not be, however; he was not there; for, while
Hepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth
from the very spot, and picked his way across the garden.
Twice he paused to snuif the air, and then anew directed
his course towards the parlor window. Whether it was
only on account of the stealthy, prying manner common
to the race, or that this cat seemed to have more than
ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman,
in spite of her much perplexity, felt an impulse to drive
the animal away, and accordingly flung down a window-
stick. The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or
murderer, and, the next instant, took to flight. No other
living creature was visible in the garden.

Chanticleer and his family had cither not left
their ipost, disheartened by the interminable rain, or
had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returning
to it. Hepzibah closed the window.

But where w’as Clifford? Could it be that, aware of
the presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently
down the staircase, while the Judge and Hepzibah stood
talking in the shop, and had softly undone the fastenings
of the outer door, and made his escape into the street?
With that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrin¬
kled, yet childlike aspect, in the old-fashioned garments
which he wore about the house; a figure such as one
sometimes imagines himself to be, with the world’s eye up¬
on him, in a troubled dream. This figure of her wretched
brother would go wandering through the city, at^
tracting all eyes, and everybody’s wonder and repugnance,
like a ghost, the more to be shuddered at because visible
at noontide. To incur the ridicule of the younger crowd,
that knew him net, — the harsher scorn and indignation

278 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

of a few old men, who might recall his once familiar fea¬
tures I To be the sport of boys, who, when old enough to
run about the streets, have no more reverence for what is
beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad, — no more
sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape in
which it embodies itself, — than if Satan were the father
of them all I Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill
cries, and cruel laughter, — insulted by the filth of the
public ways, which they would fling upon him, — or, as
it might well be, distracted by the mere strangeness of his
situation, though nobody should afflict him with so much
as a thoughtless word, — what wonder if Clifford were to
break into some wild extravagance which was certain to be
interpreted as lunacy? Thus Judge Pyncheon’s fiendish
scheme would be ready accomplished to his hands I
Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost
completely water-girdled. The wharves stretched out to¬
wards the centre of the harbor, and, in this inclement
weather, were deserted by the ordinary throng of mer¬
chants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude,
with the vessels moored stem and stem along its misty
length. Should her brother’s aimless footsteps stray
thitherward, and he but bend, one moment, over the deep,
black tide, would he not bethink himself that here was the
sure refuge within his reach, and that, with a single step,
or the slightest overbalance of his body, he might be for¬
ever beyond his kinsman’s gripe? Oh, the temptation I
To make of his ponderous sorrow a security I To sink,
with its leaden weight upon him, and never rise again I
The horror of this last conception was too much for Hep¬
zibah. Even Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now 1 She
hastened down the staircase, shrieking as she went.

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER

279

“ Clifford is gone 1 ” she cried. ** 1 cannot find my brother!
Help, Jaffrey Fyncheon I Some harm will happen to him 1 ”
She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the
shade of branches across the windows, and the smoke-
blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of the walls,
there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Hep-
zibah’s imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the
Judge’s figure. She was certain, however, that she saw
him sitting in the ancestral armchair, near the centre of
the fioor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking
towards a window. So firm and quiet is the nervous system
of such men as Judge Fyncheon, that he had perhaps
stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in
the hard composure of his temperament, retained the
position into which accident had thrown him.

“I tell you, Jaffrey," cried Hepzibah, impatiently, as
she turned from the parlor-door to search other rooms,
“ my brother is not in his chamber 1 You must help me
seek him I"

But Judge Fyncheon was not the man to let himself
be startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either
the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis,
by the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet, considering
his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirred
himself with a little more alacrity.

"Do you hear me, Jaffrey Fyncheon?” screamed Hep¬
zibah, as she again approached the parlor-door, after an
ineffectual search elsewhere. "Clifford is gone I"

At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging
from within, appeared Clifford himself I His face was
pretematurally pale; so deadly white, indeed, that,
through all the glimmering indistinctness of the passage-

280 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

way, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fdl
on them alone. Their vivid and wild expression seemed
likewise sufficient to illuminate them; it was an expres¬
sion of scorn and mockery, coinciding with the emotions
indicated by his gesture. As Cliiford stood on the thresh¬
old, partly turning back, he pointed his finger within the
parlor, and shook it slowly as though he would have sum¬
moned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to gaze
at some object inconceivably ridiculous. This action, so
ill-timed and extravagant, — accompanied, too, with a
look that showed more like joy than any other kind of ex¬
citement, — compiled Hepzibah to dread that her stem
kinsman’s ominous visit had driven her poor brother to
absolute insanity. Nor could she otherwise account for
the Judge's quiescent mood than by supposing him craft¬
ily on the watch, while Clifford developed these symptoms
of a distracted mind.

''Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising hex
hand to impress caution. "Oh, for Heaven’s sake, be
quiet!”

" Let him be quiet! What can he do better ? ” answered
Clifford, with a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room
which he had just quitted. " As for us, Hepzibah, we can
dance now! — we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will I
The weight is gone, Hepzibah I it is gone off this weary old
world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phoebe her¬
self!”

And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh,
still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Hep¬
zibah, within the parlor. She was seized with a sudden
intuition of some horrible thing. She thrust herself past
Clifford, and disappeared into the room; but almost im-

CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER

281

mediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat.
Gazing at her brother with an affrighted glance of inquiry,
she beheld him all in a tremor and a quake, from head to
foot, while, amid these commoted elements of passion or
alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.

"My God! what is to become of us?” gasped Hepzibah.

"Come!” said Clifford, in a tone of brief decision, most
unlike what was usual with him. " We stay here too long t
Let us leave the old house to our cousin Jaffrey 1 He wiU
take good care of it I ”

Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak, —
a garment of long ago, — in which he had constantly
muffled himself during these days of easterly storm. He
beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could
comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together
from'the house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken
moments, in the lives of persons who lack real force of
character, — moments of test, in which courage would
most assert itself, — but where these individuals, if left
to themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly
whatever guidance may befall them, even if it be a child’s.
No matter how preposterous or insane, a purpose is a God¬
send to them. Hepzibah had reached this point. Un¬
accustomed to action or responsibility, — full of horror
at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to
imagine, how it had come to pass, — affrighted at the fa¬
tality which seemed to pursue her brother, — stupefled
by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of dread, which filled
the house as with a death-smell, and obliterated all defi¬
niteness of thought, — she yielded without a question,
and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed.
For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the

28^J THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN'GABLES

will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of
this faculty, had found it in the tension of the crisis.

"Why do you delay so?” cried he, sharply. "Put on
your cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you to wear 1
No matter what; you cannot look beautiful nor brilliant,
my poor Hepzibah I Take your purse, with money in it,
and come along I”

Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else
were to be done or thought of. She began to wonder, it
is true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more
intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit would struggle
out of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of
all this had actually happened. Of course it was not real;
no such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be;
Judge Pyncheon had not talked with her; Clifford had
not laughed, pointed, beckoned her away with him; but
she had merely been afflicted — as lonely sleepers often
are — with a great deal of unreasonable misery, in a morm
ing dream I

"Now — now — I shall certainly awake!” thought
Hepzibah, as she went to and fro, making her little prep¬
arations. "I can bear it no longer! 1 must wake up
now!”

But it came not, that awakening moment! It came
not, even when, just before they left the house, Clifford
stole to the parlor-door, and made a parting obeisance to
the sole occupant of the room.

" What an absuid figure the old fellow cuts now 1 ” whis¬
pered he to Hepzibah. “Just when he fancied he had me
completely under his thumb I Come, come; make haste 1
or he will start up, like Giant Despair in pursuit of Chris¬
tian and Hopeful, and catch us yet!”

CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER

283

As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hep-
zibah’s attention to something on one of the posts of the
front door. It was merely the initials of his own name,
which, with somewhat of his characteristic grace about
the forms of the letters, he had cut there when a boy. The
brother and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sit¬
ting in the old home of his forefathers, all by himself; so
heavy and lumpish that We can liken him to nothing bet¬
ter than a defunct nightmare, which had perished in the
midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the
breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it
might 1

XVII

THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS

Summer as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah’s
few remaining teeth chattering in her head, as she and
Clifford faced it, on their way up Pyncheon Street, and
towards the centre of the town. Not merely was it the
shiver which this pitiless blast brought to her frame (al¬
though her feet and hands, especially, had never seemed
so death-a-cold as now), but there was a moral sensation,
mingling itself with the physical chill, and causing her to
shake more in spirit than in body. The world’s broad,
bleak atmosphere was all so comfortless! Such, indeed,
is the impression which it makes on every new adventurer,
even if he plunge into it while the warmest tide of life is
bubbling through his veins. What, then, must it have
been to Hepzibah and Clifford, — so time-stricken as they
were, yet so like children in their inexperience, — as they
left the doorstep, and passed from beneath the wide shelter
of the Pyncheon Elm! They were wandering all abroad,
on precisely such a pilgrimage as a child often meditates,
to the world’s end, with perhaps a sixpence and a biscuit
in his pocket. In Hepzibah’s mind, there was the wretched
consciousness of being adrift. She had lost the faculty
of self-guidance; but, in view of the difficulties around
her, felt it hardly worth an effort to regain it, and waSf
moreover, incapable of making one.

THE FLIGHT OP TWO OWLS

285

As they proceeded on their strange expedition she now
and then cast a look sidelong at Clifford, and could not but
observe that he was possessed and swayed by a powerful
excitement. It was this, indeed, that gave him the con¬
trol which he had at once, and so irresistibly, established
over his movements. It not a little resembled the ex¬
hilaration of wine. Or, it might more fancifully be com¬
pared to a joyous piece of music, played with wild vivacity,
but upon a disordered instrument. As the cracked jar¬
ring note might always be heard, and as it jarred loud¬
est amid the loftiest exultation of the melody, so was
there a continual quake through Clifford, causing him
most to quiver while he wore a triumphant smile, and
seemed almost under a necessity to skip in his gait.

They met few people abroad, even on passing from the
retired* neighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables
into what was ordinarily the more thronged and busier
portion of the town. Glistening sidewalks, with little
pools of rain, here and there, along their unequal surface;
umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in the shop-windows,
as if the life of trade had concentred itself in that one ar¬
ticle ; wet leaves of the horse-chestnut or elm-trees, torn
off untimely by the blast and scattered along the public
way; an unsightly accumulation of mud in the middle of
the street, which perversely grew the more unclean for
its long and laborious washing, — these were the more de¬
finable points of a very sombre picture. In the way of
movement, and human life, there was the hasty rattle of
a cab or coach, its driver protected by a water-proof cap
over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an old
man, who seemed to have crept out of some subterranean
sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the

286 THS HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

wet rubbish with a sticky in quest of rusty nails; a mer«
chant or two, at the door of the post-office, together with
an editor, and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dila¬
tory mail; a few visages of retired sea-captains at the
window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the
vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at
the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What a
treasure-trove to the venerable quidnuncs, could they
have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were
carrying along with them! But their two figures at¬
tracted hardly so much notice as that of a young girl, who
passed at the same instant, and happened to raise her
skirt a trifle too high above her ankles. Had it been a
sunny and cheerful day, they could hardly have gone
through the streets without making themselves obnoxious
to remark. Now, probably, they were felt to be in keep¬
ing with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore did
not stand out in strong relief; as if the sun were shining
on them, but melted into the gray gloom and were for¬
gotten as soon as gone.

Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact,
it would have brought her some little comfort; for, to all
her other troubles, — strange to say! — there was added
the womanish and old-maiden-like misery arising from a
sense of unseemliness in her attire. Thus, she was fain to
shrink deeper into herself, as it were, as if in the hope of
making people suppose that here was only a cloak and
hood, threadbare *and wofully faded, taking an airing in
the midst of the storm, without any wearer!

As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and un¬
reality kept dimly hovering round about her, and so dif¬
fusing itself into her system that one of her hands was

THE PLIGHT OP TWO OWLS

28?

hardly palpable to the touch of the other. Any certainty
would have been preferable to this. She whispered to
herself, again and again, “ Am I awake ? — Am I awake?'*
and sometimes exposed her face to the chill spatter of the
wind, for the sake of its rude assurance that she was.
Whether it was Clifford's purpose, or only chance, had led
them thither, they now found themselves passing be¬
neath the arched entrance of a large structure of gray
stone. Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy
height from floor to roof, now partially filled with smoke
and steam, which eddied voluminously upward and formed
a mimic cloud-region over their heads. A train of cars was
just ready for a start; the locomotive was fretting and
fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and
the bell rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief
summons which life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career.
Without question or delay, — with the irresistible deci¬
sion, if not rather to be called recklessness, which had so
strangely taken possession of him, and through him of
Hepzibah, — Clifford impelled her towards the cars, and
assisted her to enter. The signal was given; the engine
puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the train began its
movement; and. along with a hundred other passengers,
these two unwonted travellers sped onward like the wind.

At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from
everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been
drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept
away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.

Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past in¬
cidents, inclusive of Judge Pyncheon's visit, could be real,
the recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in her brother's
ear, —

288 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

** Clifford! Clifford I Is not this a dream ?

dream, Hepzibahl” repeated he, almost laughing
in her face. “On the contrary, I have never been awake
before I”

Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see
the world racing past them. At one moment, they were
rattling through a solitude; the next, a village had grown
up around them; a few breaths more, and it had vanished,
as if swallowed by an earthquake. The spires of meet¬
ing-houses seemed set adrift from their foundations; the
broad-based hills glided away. Everything was unfixed
from its age-long rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in
a direction opposite to thoir own.

Within the car there was the usual interior life of the
railroad, offering little to the observation of other passen¬
gers, but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfran¬
chised prisoners. It was novelty enough, indeed, that
there were fifty human beings in close relation with them,
under one long and narrow roof, and drawn onward by
the same mighty influence that had taken their two selves
into its gi-asp. It seemed marvellous how all these people
could remain so quietly in their seats, while so much noisy
strength was at work in their behalf. Some, with tickets
in their hats (long travellers these, before whom lay a hun¬
dred miles of railroad), had plunged into the English scen¬
ery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping
company with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer
span forbade their devoting themselves to studies so ab¬
struse, beguiled the little tedium of the way with penny-
papers. A party of girls, and one young man, on opposite
sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball.
They tos^ it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might

THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS

289

be meadiired by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble
ball could fly, the merry players fled unconsciously along,
leaving the trail of their mirth afar behind, and ending
their game under another sky than had witnessed its com¬
mencement. Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and roUs
of variously tinctured lozenges, — merchandise that re¬
minded Hepzibah of her deserted shop, — appeared at
each momentary stopping-place, doing up their business
in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the market
should ravish them away with it. New people continually
entered. Old aquaintances — for such they soon grew
to be, in this rapid current of affairs — continually de¬
parted. Here and there, amid the rumble and the tumult
sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter
study; and the common and inevitable movement on¬
ward ! it was life itself I

Clifford’s naturally poignant sympathies were all
aroused. He caught the color of what was passing about
him, and threw it back more vividly than he received it,
but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue.
Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt herself more apart from
human kind than even in the seclusion which she had
just quitted.

*'You are not happy, Hepzibah I” said Clifford, apart,
in a tone of reproach. " You are thinking of that dismal
old house, and of Cousin Jaffrey,” — here came the quake
through him — "and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all
by himself! Take my advice, — follow my example, —
and let such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world,
Hepzibah I — in the midst of life! — in the throng of our
fellow-beings! Let you and 1 be happy I As happy as
that youth, and those pretty girls, at their game of ball I"

290 TH£ HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"Happy!” thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at
the word, of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain
in it, — “ happy! He is mad already; and, if 1 could
once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad too!”

If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote
from it. Fast and far as they had rattled and clattered
along the iron track, they might just as well, as regarded
Hepzibah’s mental images, have been passing up and down
PyncKeon Street. With miles and miles of varied scenery
between, there was no scene for her, save the seven old
gable-peaks, with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one
of the angles, and the shop-window, and a customer shak¬
ing the door, and compelling the little bell to jingle
fiercely, but without di'>turbing Judge Pyncheon! This
one old house was everywhere! It transported its great,
lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed, and set
itself phlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced
at. The quality of Hepzibah’s mind was too unmalleable
to take new impressions so readily as Clifford’s. He had
a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetable kind,
and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn up by the
roots. Thus it happened that the relation heretofore ex¬
isting between her brother and herself was changed. At
home, she was his guardian; here, Clifford had become
hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged to
^eir new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence.
He had been startled into manhood and intelleci ual vigor;
or, at least, into'a condition that resembled them, though
it might be both diseased and transitory.

The conductor now applied for their tickets; ajid Clif¬
ford, who had made himself the purse-bearer, put a bank
note into his hand, as he had observed others do.

THE FLIGHT OF' TWO OWLS

291

**For the lady and yourself?” asked the conductor.
"And how far?”

" As far as that will carry us,” said Clifford. “ It is no
great matter. We are riding for pleasure merely 1”

"You choose a strange day for it, sir I” remarked a gim¬
let-eyed old gentleman, on the other side of the car, look¬
ing at Clifford and his companion, as if curious to make
them out. "The best chance of pleasure, in an easterly
rain, I take it, is in a man’s own house, with a nice little
fire in the chimney.”

"I cannot precisely agree with you,” said Clifford,
courteously bowing to the old gentleman, and at once tak¬
ing up the clew of conversation which the latter had prof¬
fered. "It had just occurred to me, on the contrary,
that this admirable invention of the railroad — with the
vast and inevitable improvements to be looked for, both
as to speed and convenience — is destined to do away
with those stale ideas of home and fireside, and substitute
something better.”

"In the name of common-sense,” asked the old gentle¬
man, rather testily, " what can be better for a man than
his own parlor and chimney-corner?”

"These things have not the merit which many good
people attribute to them,”replied Clifford. "They may
be said, in few and pithy words, to have ill served a poor
purpose. My impression is, that our wonderfully in¬
creased and still increasing facilities of locomotion are
destined to bring us round again to the nomadic state.
You are aware, my dear sir, — you must hare observed
it in your own experience, — that all human progress is
in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful figure,
in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves

292 this! house of the seven gables

going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an
entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to
something long ago tried and abandoned, but which we
now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal.
The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the pres¬
ent and the future. To apply this truth to the topic now
under discussion. In the early epochs of our race, men
dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily
constructed as a bird’s-nest, and which they built,
— if it should be called building, when such sweet
homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were made
with hands, — which Nature, we will say, assisted them
to rear where fruit abounded, where fish and game were
plentiful, or, most especially, where the sense of beauty
was to be gratified by a lovelier shade than elsewhere, and
a more exquisite arrangement of lake, wood, and hill.
This life possessed a charm, which, ever since man quitted
it, has vanished from existence. And it typified some¬
thing better than itself. It had its drawbacks; such as
hunger and thirst, inclement weather, hot sunshine, and
weary and foot-blistering marches over barren and ugly
tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for their fer¬
tility and beauty. But in our ascending spiral, we escape
all this. These railroads — could but the whistle be made
musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of — are pos¬
itively the greatest blessing that the ages have wrought
out for us. They give us wings; they annihilate the toil
and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Tran¬
sition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement
to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a
more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried
off with hhn? Why should he make himself a prisoner

THE PLIGHT OP TWO OWLS

293

for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber,
when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,
— in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall
offer him a home?’’

Clifford’s countenance glowed, as he divulged this
theory; a youthful character shone out from within, con¬
verting the wrinkles and pallid duskiness of age into an
almost transparent mask. The merry girls let their ball
drop upon the floor, and gazed at him. They said to
themselves, perhaps, that, before his hair was gray and
the crow’s-feet tracked his temples, this now decaying
man must have stamped the impress of his features on
many a woman’s heart. But, alas I no woman’s eye had
seen his face while it was beautiful.

"I should scarcely call it an impro^’^ed state of things,”
observe Clifford’s new acquaintance, ” to live everywhere
and nowhere I”

”Would you not?” exclaimed Clifford, with singular
energy. ” It is as clear to me as sunshine, —were there
any in the sky, — that the greatest possible stumbling-
blocks in the path of human happiness and improvement
are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with
mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails,
which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and
call them house and home I The soul needs air; a wide
sweep and frequent change of it. Morbid influences, in
a thdusand-fold variety, gather about hearths, and pollute
the life of households. There is no such unwholesome at¬
mosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by
one’s defunct forefathers and relatives. I speak of what
I know. There is a certain house within my familiar
recollection, — one of those peaked-gable (there are seven

294 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasion*
aliy see in our older towns, — a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-
rotted, damp-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dun^
geon, with an arched window over the porch, and a little
shop-door on one side, and a great melancholy elm before
it I Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this seven-
gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must
needs mention it), immediately I have a vision or image
of an elderly man, of remarkably stern countenance, sit¬
ting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an
ugly fiow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with
open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember
it. I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do
nor enjoy what God meant me to do and enjoy I **

His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel
itself up, and wither into age.

"Never, sir!” he repeated. "I could never draw
cheerful breath there I”

"1 should think not,” said the old gentleman, eying
Clifford earnestly, and rather apprehensively. "I should
conceive not, sir, with that notion in your head! ”

"Surely not,” continued Clifford; "and it were a relief
to me if that house could be tom down, or burnt up, and
so the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly
over its foundation. Not that I should ever visit its site
again! for, sir, the farther I get away from it, the more
does the joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the
intellectual dance, the youth, in short, — yes, my youth,
my youth! — the more does it come back to me. No
longer ago than this morning, I was old. I remember
looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray hair,
and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow.

THE FLIGHT OP TWO OWLS

295

ftnd the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious
trampling of crow’s-feet about my temples! It was too
soon! I could not bear it I Age had no right to come 1
1 had not lived! But now do 1 look old? If so, my as¬
pect belies me strangely; for — a great weight being o£P
my mind — I feel in the very heyday of my youth, with
the world and my best days before me!”

"I trust you may find it so,” said the old gentleman,
who seemed rather embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding
the observation which Clifford’s wild talk drew on them
both. “You have my best wishes for it.*’

“For Heaven’s sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!” whis¬
pered his sister. “They think you mad.”

“Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!” returned her brother.
“No matter what they think! I am not mad. For the
first time in thirty years my thoughts gush up and find
words ready for them. I must talk, and I will!”

He turned again towards the old gentleman, and re¬
newed the conversation.

“Yes, my dear sir,” said he, “it is my firm belief and
hope that these terms of roof and hearth-stone, which
have so long been held to embody something sacred, are
soon to pass out of men’s daily use, and be forgotten.
Just imagine, for a moment, how much of human evil will
crumble away, with this one change! What we call real
estate — the solid ground to build a house on — is the
broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world
rests. A man will commit almost any wrong, — he will
heap up an immense pile of wickedness, as haad as granite,
and which will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal
ages, — only to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered
mansion, for himself to die in, and for his posterity to be

296 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

miserable in. He lays his own dead corpse beneatih the
underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowning
picture on the wall, and, after thus converting himself
into an evil destiny, expects his remotest great-grandchil¬
dren to be happy there! I do not speak wildly. I have
just such a house in my mind’s eye!”

"Then, sir,” said the old gentleman, getting anxious
to drop the subject, "you are not to blame for leaving it.”

"Within the lifetime of the child already bom,” Clif¬
ford went on, "all this will be done away. The world is
growing too ethereal and spiritual to bear these enormities
a great while longer. To me, — though, for a consider¬
able period of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and
know less of such things than most men, — even to me,
the harbingers of a better era are unmistakable. Mesmer¬
ism, now 1 Will that effect nothing, think you, towards
purging away the grossness out of human life?”

"All a humbug!” growled the old gentleman.

"These rapping spirits, that little Phoebe told us of,
the other day,” said Clifford, — "what are these but the
messengers ol the spiritual world, knocking at the door of
substance ? And it shall be flung wide open 1”

"A humbug, again!” cried the old gentleman, growing
more and more testy, at these glimpses of Clifford’s met¬
aphysics. " I should like to rap with a good stick on the
empty pates of the dolts who circulate such nonsense!”

"Then there is electricity, — the demon, the angel, the
mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!”
exclaimed Clifford. "Is that a humbug, too? Is it a
fact — or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity,
the world of matter had become a great nerve, vibrating
thousands of miles in a breathless point of time ? Rather

THE PLIGHT OF TWO OWLS

297

the Toiind globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with in¬
telligence I Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing
but thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed
it I”

you mean the telegraph,** said the old gentleman,
glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track,
“ it is an excellent thing, — that is, of course, if the spec¬
ulators in cotton and politics don*t get possession of it.
A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly as regards the de¬
tection of bank-robbers and murderers.**

"I don*t quite like it, in that point of view,’* replied
Clifford. “ A bank-robber, and what you call a murderer,
likewise, has his rights, which men of enlightened hu¬
manity and conscience should regard in so much the more
liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to
contfovert their existence. An almost spiritual medium,
like the electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high,
deep, joyful, and holy missions. Lovers, day by day, —
hour by hour, if so often moved to do it, — might send
their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some such
words as these, ‘I love you forever!* — ‘My heart runs
over with love!* — ‘I love you more than I can!* and,
again, at the next message, ‘ I have lived an hour longer,
and love you twice as much! * Or, when a good man has
departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an
electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling
him, * Your dear friend is in bliss! * Or, to an absent hus¬
band, should come tidings thus, 'An immortal being, of
whom you are the father, has this moment come from
Clod I * and immediately its little voice would seem to have
reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart. But for
these poor rogues, the bank-robbers, — who after all, arq

298 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

about as honest as nine people in ten, except that they
disregard certain formalities, and prefer to transact busi«
ness at midnight rather than ’Change-hours, — and for
these murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable
in the motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked
among public benefactors, if we consider only its result,
for unfortunate individuals like these, I really cannot ap¬
plaud the enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous
power in the universal world-hunt at their heels!”

“You can’t, hey?” cried the old gentleman, with a
hard look.

“Positively, no!” answered Clifford. “It puts them
too miserably at disadvantage. For example, sir, in a
dark, low, cross-beamed, panelled room of an old house,
let us suppose a dead man, sitting in an arm-chair, with
a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom, — and let us add to our
hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which
he feels to be over-filled with the dead man’s presence, —
and let us lastly imagine him fieeing. Heaven knows
whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by railroad I Now,
sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, and find all
the people babbling about that self-same dead man, whom
he has fied so far to avoid the sight and thought of, will
you not allow that his natural rights have been infringed ?
He has been deprived of his city of refuge, and, in my
humble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong!”

“You are a strange man, sir!” said the old gentleman,
bringing his gimlet-^ye to a point on Clifford, as if deter¬
mined to bore right into him. “ I can’t see through you I”

“No, I’ll be bound you can’t!” cried Clifford, laughing.
“ And yet, my dear sir, I am as transparent as the watei
,ot Maule’s well! But come, Hepzibah! We have flown

THE PLIGHT OP TWO OWLS

299

far enough for once. Let us alight, as the birds do, and
perch ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult whither
we shall fly next!”

Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary
way-station. Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clif¬
ford left the car, and drew Hepzibah along with him. A
moment afterwards, the train — with ail the life of its in¬
terior, amid which Clifford had made himself so conspic¬
uous an object — was gliding away in the distance, and
rapidly lessening to a point, which, in another moment,
vanished. The world had fled away from these two wan¬
derers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little
distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a
dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a
great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a
rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther
off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black
as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the
three-story peak, to within a man’s height of the ground.
It seemed uninhabited. There were the relics of a wood-
pile, indeed, near the door, but with grass sprouting up
among the chips and scattered logs. The small rain-drops
came down aslant; the wind was not turbulent, but sul¬
len, and full of chilly moisture.

Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effer¬
vescence of his mood — which had so readily supplied
thoughts, fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and
impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of giving
vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas — had entirely sub¬
sided. A powerful excitement had given him energy
and vivacity. Its operation over> he forthwith began
to sink.

300 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"You must take the lead now, Hepzibahl’* murmured
he, with a torpid and reluctant utterance. " Do with me
as you will 1”

She knelt down upon the platform where they were
standing and lifted her clasped hands to the sky. The
dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was
no hour for disbelief, — no juncture this to question that
there was a sky above, and an Almighty Father lookuig
from it I

"O Godl” — ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah, —
then paused a moment, to consider what her prayer should
be, — “ O God, — our Father, — are we not thy chU-
dren ? Have mercy on us 1"

xvni

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

Judge Pyncheon, while his two relatives have fled
away with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old par¬
lor, keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the absence
of its ordinary occupants. To him, and to the venerable
House of the Seven Gables, does our story now betake
itself, like an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hasten¬
ing back to his hollow tree.

The Judge has not shifted his position for a long while
now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his
eyes so much as a hair’s-breadth from their fixed gaze to¬
wards the corner of the room, since the footsteps of Hep-
zibah and Clifford creaked along the passage, and the
outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit. He
holds his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a
manner that you cannot see the dial-plate. How pro¬
found a fit of meditation 1 Or, supposing him asleep,
how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what whole¬
some order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber

so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, mut-

%

tered dream-talk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ,
or any the slightest irregularity of breath! You must
hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he
breathes at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the
ticking of his watch; his breath you do not hear. A most
refreshing slumber, doubtless! And yet, the Judge can*

301

302 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

not be asleep. His eyes are open I A veteran politician,
such as he, would never fall asleep with wide-open eyes,
lest some enemy or mischief-maker, taking him thus at
unawares, should peep through these windows into his
consciousness, and make strange discoveries among the
reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses,
and strong points, which he has heretofore shared with
nobody. A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep
with one eye open. That may be wisdom. But not with
both; for this were heedlessness I No, no I Judge Pyn-
cheon cannot be asleep.

It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with
engagements, — and noted, too, for punctuality, —
should linger thus in an old lonely mansion, which he has
never seemed very fond of visiting. The oaken chair, to
be sure, may tempt him with its roominess. It is, indeed,
a spacious, and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned
it, a moderately easy seat, with capacity enough, at all
events, and offering no restraint to the Judge’s breadth
of beam. A bigger man might find ample accommodation
in it. His ancestor, now pictured upon the wall, with all
his English beef about him, used hardly to present a front
extending from elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that
would cover its whole cushion. But there are better
chairs than this, — mahogany, black-walnut, rosewood,
spring-seated and damask-cushioned, with varied slopes,
and innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate
the irksomeness of too tame an ease, — a score of such
might be at Judge Pyncheon’s service. Yes! in a score
of drawing-rooms he would be more than welcome.
Mamma would advance to meet him. with outstretched
hand; the virgin daughter, elderly as he has now

.mm

m%

Hawthorne's Desk and His Favorite Leather-covered Chair
IN THE Living Room op the House op the Seven Gables-

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

303

got to be, — an old widower, as he smilingly de¬
scribes himself, — would shake up the cushion fox
the Judge, and do her pretty little utmost to make
him comfortable. For the Judge is a prosperous man.
He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other people, and
reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at least,
as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse,
planning the business of the day, and speculating on the
probabilities of the next fifteen years. With his firm
health, and the little inroad that age has made upon him,
fifteen years or twenty — yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty I
'^are no more than he may fairly call his own. Five-
and-twenty years for the enjoyment of his real estate in
town and country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares,
his United States stock, — his wealth, in short, however
invested, now in possession, or soon to be acquired; to¬
gether with the public honors that have fallen upon him,
and the weightier ones that are yet to fall! It is good 1
It is excellent I It is enough 1
Still lingering in the old chair! If the Judge has a little
time to throw away, why does not he visit the insurance
office, as is his frequent custom, and sit awhile in one of
their leathem-cushioned arm-chairs, listening to the gos¬
sip of the day, and dropping some deeply designed chance-
word, which will be certain to become the gossip of to¬
morrow I And have not the bank directors a meeting at
which it was the Judge’s purpose to be present, and his
office to preside? Indeed they have; and the hour is
noted on a card, which is, or ought to be, in Judge Pyn-
cheon’s right vest-pocket. Let him go thither^ and loll
at ease upon his money-bags! He has lounged long
enough in the old chair I

304 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

This was to have been such a busy day! In the first
place, the interview with Clifford. Half an hour, by the
Judge's reckoning, was to suffice for that; it would proba¬
bly be less, but — taking into consideration that Hepzibah
was first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt
to make many words where a few would do much better
— it might be safest to allow half an hour. Half an hour ?
Why, Judge, it is already two hours, by your own unde-
viatingly accurate chronometer! Glance your eye down
at it and see! Ah 1 he will not give himself the trouble
either to bend his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring
the faithful time-keeper within his range of vision! Time,
all at once, appears to have become a matter of no mo¬
ment with the Judge!

And has he forgotten all the other items of his memo¬
randa? Clifford's affair arranged, he was to meet a
State Street broker, who has undertaken to procure a
heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a few loose
thousands which the Judge happens to have by him, un¬
invested. The wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his
railroad trip in vain. Half an hour later, in the street
next to this, there was to be an auction of real estate, in¬
cluding a portion of the old Pyncheon property, originally
belonging to Maule's garden-ground. It has been alien¬
ated from the Pyncheons these four-score years; but the
Judge had kept it in liis eye, and had set his heart on rf-
annexing it to the small demesne still left around the Seven
Gables; and now,*during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal
hammer must have fallen, and transferred our ancient
patrimony to some alien possessor! Possibly, indeed,
the sale may have been postponed till fairer weather. If
so, will the Judge make it convenient to be present, and

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

305

favor the auctioneer with his bid, on the proximate occa¬
sion?

The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving.
The one heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morn¬
ing, on the road to town, and must be at once discarded.
Judge Pyncheon’s neck is too precious to be risked on such
a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above
business be seasonably got through with, he might attend
the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of
which, however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is
quite forgotten; so that this engagement may pass unful¬
filled, and no great harm done. And if he have time, amid
the press of more urgent matters, he must take measures
for the renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon’s tombstone, which, the
sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is
cracked quite in twain. She was a praiseworthy woman
enough, thinks the Judge, in spite of her nervousness, and
the tears that she was so oozy with, and her foolish be¬
havior about the coffee; and as she took her departure so
seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone. It
is better, at least, than if she had never needed any I The
next item on his list was to give orders for some fruit-trees,
of a rare variety, to be deliverable at his country-seat, in
the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them, by all means; and
may the peaches be luscious in your mouth. Judge Pyn-
cheon! After this comes something more important. A
committee of his political party has sought him for a hun¬
dred or two of dollars, in addition to his previous disburse¬
ments, towards carrying on the fall campaign. The Judge
is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on the No¬
vember election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth
in another paragraph, he has no trifiing stake of his own

806 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

in the same great game. He will do what the committee
asks; nay, he will be liberal beyond their expectations;
they shall have a iJieck for five hundred dollars, and more
anon, if it be needed. What next? A decayed widow,
whose husband was Judge Pyncheon’s early friend, has
laid her case of destitution before him, in a very moving
letter. She and her fair daughter have scarcely bread to
eat. He partly intends to call on her, to-day, — perhaps
so — perhaps not, — accordingly as he may happen to
have leisure, and a small bank-note.

Another business, which, however, he puts no great
weight on (it is well, you know, to be heedful, but not over¬
anxious, as respects one's personal health), — another busi¬
ness, then, was to consult his family physician. About
what, for Heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult to
describe the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and
dizziness of brain, was it? — or a disagreeable choking, or
stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling, in the region of the tho¬
rax, as the anatomists say ? — or was it a pretty severe
throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather creditable to
him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not
been left out of the Judge's physical contrivance? No
matter what it was. The doctor, probably, would smile
at the statement of such trifles to his professional ear;
the Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting one an¬
other's eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh ti)getherl
But a fig for medical advice t The Judge will never need
it.

Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, now I
What — not a glance! It is within ten minutes of the
dinner-hour I It surely cannot have slipped your memory
that the .dinner of to-day is to be the most important, in

GOVERNOR PyNCHBON

its consequences, of all the dinners you ever ate* Yes,
precisely the most important; although, in the course of
your somewhat eminent career, you have been placed high
towards the head of the table, at splendid banquets, and
have poured out your festive eloquence to ears yet echo¬
ing with Webster's mighty organ-tones. No public dinner
this, however. It is merely a gathering of some dozen or
so of friends from several districts of the State; men of
distinguished character and influence, assembling, almost
casually, at the house of a common friend, likewise dis¬
tinguished, who will make them welcome to a little better
than his ordinary fare. Nothing in the way of French
cookery, but an excellent dinner nevertheless. Real tuT'
tie, we understand, and salmon, tautog, canvas-backs,
pig, English mutton, good roast-beef, or dainties of that
serious kind, fit for substantial country-gentlemen, as
these honorable persons mostly are. The delicacies of
the season, in short, and flavored by a brand of old Ma¬
deira which has been the pride of many seasons. It is the
Juno brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and full of gentle
might; a bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden
liquid, worth more than liquid gold; so rare and admira¬
ble, that veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs
to have tasted it! It drives away the heart-ache, and
substitutes no head-ache I Could the Judge but quaff a
glass, it might enable him to shake off the unaccountable
lethargy which (for the ten intervening minutes, and five to
boot, are already past) has made him such a laggard at
thb momentous dinner. It would all but revive a dead
man! Would you like to sip it now. Judge Pyncheon?

Alas, this dinner 1 Have you really forgotten its true
object? Then let us whisper it, that vou may start at

308 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

once out of the oaken chair, which really seems to be en¬
chanted, like the one in Comus, or that in which Moll
Pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather. But ambition
is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up,
then, and, hurrying through the streets, burst in upon the
company, that they may begin before the fish is spoiled!
They wait for you; and it is little for your interest that
they should wait. These gentlemen — need you be told
it ? — have assembled, not without purpose, from every
quarter of the State. They arc practised politicians,
every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary
measures which steal from the people, without its knowl¬
edge, the power of choosing its own rulers. The popular
voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as
thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen
shall speak, under their breath, at your friend’s festive
board. They meet to decide upon their candidate. This
little knot of subtle schemers will control the convention,
and, through it, dictate to the party. And what worthier
candidate, — more wise and learned, more noted for phil¬
anthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener
by public trusts, more spotless in private character, with
a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper grounded,
by hereditary descent, in the faith and practice of the
Puritans, — what man can be presented for the suf¬
frage of the people, so eminently combining all these
claims to the chi^-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here be¬
fore us ?

Make haste, then! Do your parti The meed for
which you have toiled, and fought, and climbed, and
crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at this dinner I
'— drink a glass or two of that noble wine! — make your

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

309

pledges in as low a whisper as you will! — and you rise up
from table virtually governor of the glorious old State!
Governor Pyncheon of Massachusetts!

And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a
certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose of
half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs
little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you
sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather’s oaken
chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We
have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times,
one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an
elective chief-magistracy.

Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner I Turtle, sal¬
mon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mut¬
ton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in frag¬
ments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over
with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing else,
would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork.
It was he, you know, of whom it used to be said, in refer¬
ence to his ogre-like appetite, that his Creator made him
a great animal, but that the dinner-hour made him a great
beast. Persons of his large sensual endowments must
claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. But, for once,
the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we
fear, even to join the party at their wine I The guests are
warm and merry; they have given up the Judge; and,
concluding that the Free-Soilers have him, they will fix
up another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk in
among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and
stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their
cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon,
generally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a

310 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

dinner-table ^ith that crimson stain upon bis shirb'bosom.
By tbe by, how came it there ? It is an ugly sight, at
any rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button
his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and
chaise from the livery-stable, to make all speed to his own
house. There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a
mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such
hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better
spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his
slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness
which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling
through his veins.

Up, therefore. Judge Pyncheon, up I You have lost a
day. But to-morrow will be here anon. Will you rise,
betimes, and make the most of it? To-morrow I To¬
morrow! To-morrow! We, that are alive, may rise
betimes to-morrow. As for him that has died to-day,
his morrow will be the resurrection mom.

Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the
corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture
grow deeper, and at first become more definite; then,
spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in
the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly
over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting
in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from
without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its
own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The
Judge's face, indehd, rigid, and singularly white, refuses
to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter
grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of
darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it b
no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appean

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

311

Hnce at the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a
glimmer, — any phrase of light would express something
for brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather,
that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished ? No!
— yes I — not quite I And there is still the swarthy
whiteness, — we shall venture to marry these ill-agree¬
ing words, — the swarthy -whiteness of Judge Pyncheon’s
face. The features are all gone: there is only the paleness
of them left. And how looks it now ? There is no window I
There is no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has
annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crum¬
bled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may harken
to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and mur¬
muring about, in quest of what was once a world I

Is there no other sound ? One other, and a fearful one.
It is the ticking of the Judge’s watch, which, ever since
Hepzibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been
holding in his hand. Be the cause what it may, this little,
quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time’s pulse, repeating its
small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Fyn-
cheon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we
do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene.

But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it
had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has be¬
moaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable
sympathy, for five days past. The wind has veered
about! It now comes boisterously from the northwest
and, taking hold of the aged framework of the Seven Ga¬
bles, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try
strength with his antagonist. Another and another
sturdy tussle with the blast! The old house creaks
again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible

31^ THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its
wide chimney), partly in complaint at the rude wind, but
rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy,
in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars be¬
hind the fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs.
A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven
in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, before¬
hand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old
timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest
noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob,
and shriek, — and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy
but ponderous, in some distant chamber, — and to tread
along the entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up
and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff,
— whenever the gale catches the house with a window
open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an
attendant spirit here! It is too awful I This clamor of
the wind through the lonely house; the Judge’s quietude,
as he sits invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of his
watch!

As regards Judge Pyncheon’s invisibility, however,
that matter will soon be remedied. The northwest wind
has swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen.
Through its panes, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep
of the dark, clustering foliage, outside, fluttering with a
constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep
of starlight, now here, now there. Oftener than any other
object, these glimpses illuminate the Judge’s face. But
here comes more effectual light. Observe that silvery
dance upon the upper branches of the pear-tree, and now
a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while,
through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

313

aslant into the room. They play over the Judge’s figure
and show that he has not stirred throughout the hours of
darkness. They follow the shadows, in changeful sport,
across his unchanging features. They gleam upon his
watch. His grasp conceals the dial-plate; but we know
that the faithful hands have met; for one of the city
clocks tells midnight.

A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon,
cares no more for twelve o’clock at night than for the cor¬
responding hour of noon. However just the parallel
drawn, in some of the preceding pages, between his Pu¬
ritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point. The Pyn¬
cheon of two centuries ago, in common with most of his
contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual min¬
istrations, although reckoning them chiefly of a malig¬
nant character. The Pyncheon of to-night, who sits in
yonder arm-chair, believes in no such nonsense. Such,
at least, was his creed, some few hours since. His hair
will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which — in times
when chimney-corners had benches in them, where old
people sat poking into the ashes of the past, and raking
out traditions like live coals — used to be told about this
very room of his ancestral house. In fact, these tales are
too absurd to bristle even childhood’s hair. What sense,
meaning, or moral, for example, such as even ghost-
stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the ridicu¬
lous legend, that, at midnight, all the dead Fyncheons are
bound to assemble in this parlor ? And, pray, for what ?
Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still
keeps its place upon the wall, in compliance with his testa¬
mentary directions! Is it worth while to come out of
their graves for that ?

314 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea.
Ghost-stories are hardly to be treated seriously, any longer.
The family-party of the defunct Fyncheons, we presume,
goes off in this wise.

First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak,
steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with
a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword; he
has a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced
life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as
for the support to be derived from it. He looks up at the
portrait; a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted
image I All is safe. The picture is still there. The
purpose of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after
the man himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass. See!
he lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame. All safe.
But is that a smile ? — is it not, rather, a frown of deadly
import, that darkens over the shadow of his features?
The stout Colonel is dissatisfied! So decided is his look
of discontent as to impart additional distinctness to his
features; through which, nevertheless, the moonlight
passes, and flickers on the wall beyond. Something has
strangely vexed the ancestor 1 With a grim shake of the
head, he turns away. Here come other Pyncheons, the
whole tribe, in their half a dozen generations, jostling and
elbowing one another, to reach the picture. We behold
aged men and grandames, a clergyman with the Puritanic
stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated ofiicer
of the old French .war; and there comes the shop-keeping
Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back
from his wrists; and there the periwigged and brocaded
gentleman of the artist’s legend, with the beautiful and
pensive Alice, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave.

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

315

All try the picture-frame. What do these ghostly people
seek ? A mother lifts her child, that his little hands may
touch it I There is evidently a mystery about the picture,
that perplexes these poor Pyncheons when they ought to
be at rest. In the comer, meanwhile, stands the figure of
an elderly man, in a leather jerkin and breeches, with a
caj^enter’s rule sticking out of his side pocket, he points
his finger at the bearded Colonel and his descendants,
nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into ob¬
streperous, though inaudible laughter.

Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost
the power of restraint and guidance. We distinguish an
unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those
ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very
fashion of to-day: he wears a dark frock-coat, almost des¬
titute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent
leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his
breast, and a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his
hand. Were we to meet this figure at noonday, we should
greet him as young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the Judge’s only
surviving child, who has been spending the last two years
in foreign travel. If still in life, how comes his shadow
hither? If dead, what a misfortune! The old Pyn¬
cheon property, together with the great estate acquired
by the young man’s father, would devolve on whom ? On
poor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic little
Phcebe! But another and a greater marvel greets us!
Can we believe our eyes ? A stout, elderly gentleman has
made his appearance; he has an aspect of eminent respect¬
ability, wears a black coat and pantaloons, of roomy
width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his
attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy neck'

310 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

cloth and down his sh^]qfe^hosom. Is it the Judge, or no?
How can it be Judge Pyncheon? We discern his figure,
as plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us any¬
thing, still seated in the oaken chair! Be the apparition
whose it may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize
the frame, tries to peep behind it, and turns away, with
a frown as black as the ancestral one.

The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be
considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We
were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver
of the moonbeams; they dance hand-in-hand with shad¬
ows, and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are
aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the
spiritual world. We ne4*ded relief, moreover, from our
too long and exclusive contemplation of that figure in the
chair. This wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into
strange confusion, but without tearing them away from
their one determined centre. Yonder leaden Judge sits
immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir again?
We shall go mad unless he stirs! You may the better
estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse,
which sits on its hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close
by Judge Pyncheun’s foot, and seems to meditate a jour¬
ney of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha t what
has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of
grimalkin, t>utside of the window, where he appears to
have posted himself for a deliberate watch. Thb gri¬
malkin has a very ugly look. Is it a cat watching for a
mouse, or the devil for a human soul ? Would we could
scare him from the window!

Thank Heaven, the night is wellnigh past I The moon¬
beams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

317

strongly with the blackness of shadows among whidi
they fall. They are paler, now; the shadows look gray,
not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. *What is the
hour ? Ah 1 the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the
Judge’s forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual,
at ten o’clock, being half an hour or so before his ordinary
bedtime, — and it has run down, for the first time in five
years. But the great world-clock of Time still keeps its
beat. The dreary night — for, oh, how dreary seems its
haunted waste, behind us I — gives place to a fresh, trans¬
parent cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The
daybeam — even what little of it finds its way into this
always dusky parlor — seems part of the universal ben¬
ediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness pos¬
sible, and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pyncheon
now rise up from his chair? Will he go forth, and receive
the early sunbeams on his brow ? Will he begin this new
day, — which God has smiled upon, and blessed, and
given to mankind, — will he begin it with better purposes
than the many that have been spent amiss? Or are all
the deep-laid schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his
heart, and as busy in his brain, as ever ?

In this latter case, there is much to do. Will the Judge
still insist with Hepzibah on the interview with Clifford ?
Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman’s horse? Will he
persuade the purchaser of tlie old Pyncheon*^property to
relinquish the bargain, in his favor ? Will he see his fam¬
ily physician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve
him, to be an honor and blessing to his race, until the ut¬
most term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pyn¬
cheon, above all, make due apologies to that company of
honorable friends, and satisfy them that his absence from

318 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

the festive board was unavoidable, and so fully retrieve
himself in their good opinion that he shall yet be Governor
of Massachusetts? And all these great purposes accom¬
plished, will he walk the streets again, with that dog-day
smile of elaborate benevolence, sultry enough to tempt
flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, after the tomb¬
like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a hum¬
bled and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no
profit, shrinking from worldly honor, hardly daring to
love God, but bold to love his fellowman, and to do him
what good he may ? Will he bear about with him, — no
odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretence,
and loathsome in its falsehood, — but the tender sadness
of a contrite heart, broken, at last, beneath its own weight
of sin? For it is our belief, whatever show of honor he
may have piled upon it, that there was heavy sin at the
base of this man’s being.

Rise up. Judge FyncheonI The morning sunshine
glimmers through the foliage, and, beautiful and holy as
it is, shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou sub¬
tle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy
choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-
hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy
nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them I The
Avenger is upon thee ! Rise up, before it be too late !

What I Thou art not stirred by this last appeal ? No,
not a jot! And there we see a fiy, — one of your com¬
mon house-flies, such as are always buzzing on the win¬
dow-pane,— which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon,
and alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and
now, Heaven help us I is creeping over the bridge of his
nose, towards the would-be chief-magistrate's wide-open

GOVERNOR PYNCHEON

319

eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away? Art thou
too sluggish ? Thou man, that hadst so many busy proj¬
ects yesterday! Art thou too weak, that wast so power¬
ful ? Not brush away a fly ? Nay, then, we give thee up I
And hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like these
latter ones, through which we have borne our heavy tale,
it is good to be made sensible that there is a living world,
and that even this old, lotiely mansion retains some man-
ncu* of connection with it. We breathe more freely,
emerging from Judge Pyncheon's presence into the street
before the Seven Gables.

XIX

ALICE’S POSIES

Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the ear¬
liest person stirring in the neighborhood the day after the
storm.

Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven
Gables, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, con¬
fined by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden dwel¬
lings of the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to
present. Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for
the five unkindly days which had preceded it. It would
have been enough to live for, merely to look up at the wide
benediction of the sky, or as much of it as was visible be¬
tween the houses, genial once more with sunshine. Every
object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the
breadth, or examined more minutely. Such, for example,
were the trell-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk;
even the sky-reflecting pools in the centre of the street;
Btid the grass, now freshly verdant, that crept along the
base of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped
over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. Vege¬
table productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than
negatively happy, in the juicy warmth and abundance of
their life. The Pyncheon Elm, throughout its great cir¬
cumference, was all alive, and full of the morning sun and
a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within this
verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whin-

320

The Old Counting House in the Yard.

Before the days of office buildings business was transacted in such out-buildings as this

ALICE'S POSIES

321

pering all at once. This aged tree appeared to have
suffered nothing from the gale. It had kept its boughs
unshattered, and its full complement of leaves; and the
whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by
the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes
prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to bright
gold. It was like the golden branch that gained ^neas
and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.

This one mystic branch hung down before the main
entrance of the Seven Gables, so nigh the ground that any
passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off.
Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of
his right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the
secrets of the house. So little faith is due to external
appearance, that there was really an inviting aspect over
the Venerable edifice, conveying an idea that its history
must be a decorous and happy one, and such as would be
delightful for a fireside tale. Its windows gleamed cheer¬
fully in the slanting sunlight. The lines and tuft of green
moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and
sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place,
being of such old date, had established its prescriptive
title among primeval oaks and whatever other objects,
by virtue of their long continuance, have acquired a gra¬
cious right to be. A person of imaginative temperament,
while passing by the house, would turn, once and again,
and peruse it well: its many peaks, consenting together
in the clustered chimney; the deep projection over its
basement-story; the arched window, imparting a look, if
not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the broken
portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic
burdocks, near the threshold; he would note all these

322 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

characteristics, and be conscious of something deeper than
he saw. He would conceive the mansion to have been
the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity, who,
dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in
all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be
seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or
upright poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants,
to this day.

One object, above all others, would take root in the
imaginative observer’s memory. It was the great tuft
of flowers, — weeds, you would have called them, only a
week ago, — the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the
angle between the two front gables. The old people used
to give them the name of Alice’s Posies, in remembrance
of fair Alice Pyncheon, who was believed to have brought
their seeds from Italy. They were flaunting in rich
beauty and full bloom to-day, and seemed, as it were, a
mystic expression that something within the house was
consummated.

It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Vernier made
his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow
along the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to
collect cabbage-leaves, tumip-tops, potato-skins, and the
miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty
housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put
aside, as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner’s pig was
fed entirely, and kept in prime order, cn these eleemosy¬
nary contributions; • insomuch that the patched philoso¬
pher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he
would make a feast of the portly grunter and invite all
his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which
they had helped to fatten. Mbs Hepzibah Pyncheon’s

ALICE’S POSIES

323

housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clifford be¬
came a member of the family, that her share of the ban¬
quet would have been no lean one; and Uncle Venner,
accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the
large earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that or¬
dinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the
Seven Gables.

"I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,”
said the patriarch to himself. “She must have had a
dinner yesterday, — no question of that I She always
has one, nowadays. So where’s the pot-liquor and po¬
tato-skins, I ask ? Shall I knock, and see if she’s stirring
yet? No, no, — ’twon’t do! If little Phoebe was about
the house, I should not mind knocking; but Miss Hep¬
zibah* likely as not, would scowl down at me out of the
window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So,
I’ll come back at noon.”

With these reflections, the old man was shutting the
gate of the little back-yard. Creaking on its hinges, how¬
ever, like every other gate and door about the premises,
the sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northern
gable, one of the windows of which had a side-view to¬
wards the gate.

"Good morning. Uncle Venner!” said the daguerre-
otypist, leaning out of the window. "Do you hear no¬
body stirring ? ”

"Not a soul,” said the man of patches. "But that’s
no wonder. ’Tis barely half an hour past sunrise, yet.
But I’m really glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave I There’s
a strange, lonesome look about this side of the house;
so that my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and I
felt as if there was nobody alive in it. The front of the

324 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

house looks a good deal cheerier; and Alice’s Posies are
blooming there beautifully; and if I were a young man,
Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should have one of those
flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing
for it 1 Well, and did the wind keep you awake last
night?”

“It did, indeed!” answered the artist, smiling. “If
I were a believer in ghosts, — and I don’t quite know
whether J am or not, — I should have concluded that all
the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower rooms,
especially in Miss Hepzibah’s part of the house. But
it is very quiet now.”

"Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself,
after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,” said
Uncle Venner. “ But it would be odd, now, wouldn't it,
if the Judge had taken both his cousins into the country
along with him? I saw him go into the shop yester¬
day.”

"At what hour?” inquired Holgrave.

"Oh, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. "Well,
well! I must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbar¬
row. But I’ll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig
likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No meal-time, and
no sort of victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig.
Good morning to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a
young man, like you, I’d get one of Alice’s Posies, and
keep it in water till Phcebe comes back.”

“I have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he drew
in his head, “that the water of Maule’s well suits those
flowers best.”

Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went
on his way. For half an hour longer, nothing disturbed

ALICE’S POSIES

325

the repose of the Seven Gables; nor was there any visitor:,
except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep,
threw down one of hb newspapers; for Hepzibah, of late,
had regularly taken it in. After a while, there came a fat
woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she
ran up the steps of the shop-door. Her face glowed with
fire-heat, and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled
and hissed, as it were, as if all a-fry with chimney-warmth,
and summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own corpu¬
lent velocity. She tried the shop-door; it was fast. She
tried it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled an¬
grily back at her.

“The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheonl” muttered the
irascible housewife. “Think of her pretending to set up
a cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are
what she calls gentlefolk’s airs, 1 suppose! But I’ll either
start her ladyship, or break the door down!”

She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spite¬
ful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making
its remonstrances heard, — not, indeed, by the ears for
which they were intended, — but by a good lady on the
opposite side of the street. She opened her window, and
addressed the impatient applicant.

“You’ll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.”

“But I must and will find somebody here!” cried Mrs.
Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. “I
want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate floun¬
ders, for Mr. Gubbins’s breakfast; and, lady or not, Old
Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with it! ”

“But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded the
lady opposite. “ She, and her brother too, have both gone
to their cousin. Judge Pyncheon's, at his country-seat.

326 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

There’s not a soul in the house, but that young daguerrei
otype-man that sleeps in the north gable. I saw old
Hepzibah and Clifford go away yesterday; and a queer
couple of ducks they were, paddling through the mud-
puddles I They’re gone, I’ll assure you.”

“And how do you know they’re gone to the Judge’s?”
asked Mrs. Gubbins. “He’s a rich man; and there’s
been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah thb many a
day, because he won’t give her a living. That’s the main
reason of her setting up a cent-shop.”

“I know that well enough,” said the neighbor. “But
they’re gone, — that’s one thing certain. And who but
a blood relation, that couldn’t help himself, I ask you,
would take in that awful-tompered old maid, and that
dreadful Clifford? That’s it, you may be sure.”

Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over
with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For an¬
other half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was
almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within.
The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh,
responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible;
a swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping
shadow, and became specks of light whenever they darted
into the sunshine; a locust sang, once or twice, in some
inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird,
with plumage of pale gold, came and hovered about
Alice’s Posies.

At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged
up the street, on his way to school; and happening, for
the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent,
he could by no means get past the shop-door of the Seven
Gables. But it would not open. Again and again, how-

ALICE’S POSIES

327

ever, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable
pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important
to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance. He had,
doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly,
with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response
to his more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then,
a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by
any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe
strength. Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through
a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the inner door,
communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was
closed.

"Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on the
window-pane, “ I want an elephant 1 ”

Theje being no answer to several repetitions of the
summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little
pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone,
with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window;
at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath.
A man — one of two who happened to be passing by —
caught the urchin’s arm.

"What’s the trouble, old gentleman?” he asked.

“I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them I”
answered Ned, sobbing. "They won’t open the door;
and I can’t get my elephant! ”

"Go to school, you little scampi” said the man.
"There’s another cent-shop round the corner. ’Tis very
strange, Dixey,” added he to his companion, "what’s
become of all these Pyncheons! Smith, the livery-stable
keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yester¬
day, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away
yet. And one of the Judge’s hired men has been in, this

328 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN OABLES

morning, to make inquiry about him. He’s a kind of per*
son, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out
o* nights.”

"Oh, he’ll turn up safe enough 1” said Dixey. "And
as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has
run in debt, and gone off from her creditors. I foretold,
you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her
devilish scowl would frighten away customers. They
couldn’t stand it!”

"I never thought she’d make it go,” remarked his
friend. "This business of cent-shops is overdone
among the womenfolks. My wife tried it, and lost five
dollars on her outlay I”

" Poor business 1 ” said Dixey, shaking his head. " Poor
business!”

In the course of the morning, there were various other
attempts to open a communication with the supposed in¬
habitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The
man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with
a couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty
ones; the baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah
had ordered for her retail custom; the butcher, with a
nice titbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure
for Clifford. Had any observer of these proceedings been
aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house, it
would have affected him with a singular shape and mod¬
ification of horror, to see the current of human life making
this small eddy Hereabouts, — whirling sticks, straws,
and all such trifles, round and round, right over the black
depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!

The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweet¬
bread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that ha

ALICE’S POSIES

32d

tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, and at
length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily
found admittance.

" It’s a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump
at it,” said he to himself. “She can’t be gone away I In
fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon
Street, I’ve never known her to be away from home;
though often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all
day without bringing her to the door. But that was when
she’d only herself to provide for.”

Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where,
only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appe¬
tite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door,
not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost
wide open. However it might have happened, it was
the fact. Through the passage-way there was a dark
vista into the lighter but still obscure interior of the par¬
lor. It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty
clearly discern what seemed to be the stalwart legs, clad
in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large oaken chair,
the back of which concealed all the remainder of his
figure. This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of
an occupant of the house, in response to the butcher’s in¬
defatigable efforts to attract notice, so piqued the man of
flesh that he determined to withdraw.

“So,” thought he, “there sits Old Maid Pyncheon’s
bloody brother, while I’ve been giving myself all this trou¬
ble 1 Why, if a hog hadn’t more manners, I’d stick him I
I call it demeaning a man’s business to trade with such
people; and from this time forth, if they want a sausage
or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart
for ill”

;ksu the house of the seven gables

He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove otf
in a pet.

Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of mu¬
sic turning the corner, and approaching down the street,
with several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and
nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children
was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the
sound, which appeared to proceed from the centre of
the throng; so that they were loosely bound together by
slender strains of harmony, and drawn along captive;
with ever and anon an accession of some little fellow in an
apron and straw-hat, capering forth from door or gate¬
way. Arriving under the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm,
it proved to be the Italian lioy, who, with his monkey and
show of puppets, had once before played his hurdy-gurdy
beneath the arched window. The pleasant face of Phcebe
— and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she
had flung him — still dwelt in his remembrance. His
expressive features kindled up, as he recognized the spot
where this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced,
He entered the neglected yard (now wilder than ever,
with its growth of hog-weed and burdock), stationed him¬
self on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening
his show-box, began to play. Each individual of the au¬
tomatic community forthwith set to work, according to
his or her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his
Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the by-standers
most obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up
a stray cent; and the young foreigner himself, as he turned
the crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched
window, expectant of a presence that would make his
music the livelier and sweeter. The throng of children

ALICE’S POSIES

331

stood near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard;
two or three establishing themselves on the very door¬
step; and one squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile,
the locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm.

“I don’t hear anybody in the house,” said one of the
children. “The monkey won’t pick up anything here.”

“There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin on
the threshold. “1 heard A step I”

Still the young Italian’s eye turned sidelong upward;
and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though
dight and almost playful, emotion communicated a jui¬
cier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his min¬
strelsy. These wanderers are readily responsive to any
natural kindness — be it no more than a smile, or a word
itself not understood, but only a warmth in it — which
befalls'them on the roadside of life. They remember
these things, because they are the little enchantments
which, for the instant, — for the space that reflects a
landscape in a soap-bubble, — build up a home about
them. Therefore, the Italian boy would not be discour¬
aged by the heavy silence with which the old house seemed
resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument. He per¬
sisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked upward,
trusting that his dark, alien countenance would soon be
brightened by Phoebe’s sunny aspect. Neither could he
be willing to depart without again beholding Clifford,
whose sensibility, like Phoebe’s smile, had talked a kind
of heart’s language to the foreigner. He repeated all hi?
music over and over again, until his auditors were getting
weary. So were the little wooden people in his show-
box, and the monkey most of all. There was no response,
save tlie singing of the locust.

332 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

** No children live in this house,” said a school-boy, at
last. “Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old
man. You’ll get nothing here! Why don’t you go
along?”

“You fool, you, why do you tell him?” whispered a
shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but
a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. “ Let
him play as long as he likes! If there’s nobody to pay
him, that’s his own lookout!”

Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of
melodies. To the common observer — who could under¬
stand nothing of the case, except the music and the sun¬
shine on the hither side of the door — it might have been
amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street-performer.
Will he succeed at last ? Will that stubborn door be sud¬
denly flung open? Will a group of joyous children, the
young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laugh¬
ing, into the open air, and cluster round the show-box,
looking with eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing
each a copper for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to
pick up ?

But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables
as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this
repetition of light popular tunes at its door-step. It
would be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon
(who would not have cared a fig for Paganini’s fiddle in
his most harmonious mood) should make his appearance
at the door, with aHbloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown
on his swarthily white visage, and motion the foreign vag¬
abond away! Was ever before such a grinding out of
jigs and waltzes, where nobody was in the cue to dance ?
Yes, very often. This contrast, or intermingling of trag-

ALICE’S POSIES

333

edy with mirth, happens daily, hourly, momently. The
gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life, and with
awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the em¬
blem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is com¬
pelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world’s gayety
around it.

Before the conclusion of the Italian’s performance, a
couple of men happened to be passing, on their way to
dinner.

”1 say, you young French fellow!” called out one of
them, — “ come away from that doorstep, and go some¬
where else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family
live there; and they are in great trouble, just about this
time. They don’t feel musical to-day. It is reported all
over town that Judge Pyncheon, who owns the house, has
been murdered; and the city marshal is going to look into
the matter. So be off with you, at once!”

As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on
the doorstep a card, which had been covered, all the morn¬
ing, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it,
but was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and
perceiving something written in pencil, gave it to the man
to read. In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyn-
cheon’s with certain pencilled memoranda on the back,
referring to various businesses which it had been his pur¬
pose to transact during the preceding day. It formed a
prospective epitome of the day’s history; only that af¬
fairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the
programme. The card must have been lost from the
Judge’s vest-pocket, in his preliminary attempt to gain
access by the main entrance of the house. Though well
soaked with rain, it was still partially legible.

334 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"Look here, Dixey T* cried the man. "This has some*
thing to do with Judge Pyncheon. Seel — here’s his
name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his
handwriting.”

" Let’s go to the city marshal with it! ” siid Dixey. " H
may give him just the clew he wants. After all,” whis*
pered he in his companion’s ear, " it would be no wonder
if the Judge has gone into that door and never come out
again I A certain cousin of his may have been at his old
tricks. And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in
debt by the cent-shop, — and the Judge’s pocket-book
being well filled, — and bad blood amongst them already I
Put all these things together and see what they make!”

"Hush, hush!” whispered the other. "It seems like
a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think,
with you, that we had better go to the city marshal.”

"Yes, yes!” said Dixey. “Well! — I always said
there was something devilish in that woman’s scowl!”

The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced
their steps up the street. The Italian, also, made the
best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the arched
window. As for the children, they took to their heels,
with one accord, and scampered as if some giant or ogre
were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house,
they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had
set out. Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite
alarm from what they had overheard. Looking back at
the grotesque peaks lind shadowy angles of the old man¬
sion, they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no
brightness of the sunshine could dispel. An imaginary
Hepzibah scowled and shook her finger at them from sev¬
eral windows at the same moment. An imaginary

ALICE’S POSIES

335

Clifford — for (and it would have deeply wounded him
to know it) he had always been a horror to these small
people — stood behind the unreal Hepzibah, making aw¬
ful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown. Children are
even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch'
the contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the day,
the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of
avoiding the Seven Gables; while the bolder signalized
their hardihood by challenging their comrades to race
past the mansion at full speed.

It could not have been more than half an hour after the
disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable
melodies, when a cab drove down the street. It stopped
beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman took a trunk,
a canvas bag, and a bandbox, from the top of his vehicle,
and deposited them on the doorstep of the old house; a
straw bonnet, and then the pretty figure of a young girl,
came into view from the interior of the cab. It was
Phoebe! Though not altogether so blooming as when she
first tripped into our story, — for, in the few intervening
weeks, her experiences had made her graver, more
womanly, and deeper-eyed, in token of a heart that had be¬
gun to suspect its depths, — still there was the quiet glow
of natural sunshine over her. Neither had she forfeited
her proper gift of making things look real, rather than
fantastic, within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a ques¬
tionable venture, even for Phoebe, at this juncture, to
cross the threshold of the Seven Gables. Is her healthful
presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale,
hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have gained admit¬
tance there since her departure? Or will she, likewise,
fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be

336 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and
down the stairs, and affright children as she pauses at the
window?

At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting
girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance to
receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyncheon,
who — wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our
remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him! — still
keeps his place in the oaken chair.

Phoebe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to
her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the win¬
dow which formed the upper section of the door, struck
her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual.
Without making another effort to enter, here, she betook
herself to the great portal, under the arched window.
Finding it fastened, she knocked. A reverberation came
from the emptiness within. She knocked again, and a
third time; and, listening intently, fancied that the floor
creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, with her ordinary
tiptoe movement, to admit her. But so dead a silence
ensued upon this imaginary sound, that she began to ques¬
tion whether she might not have mistaken the house, fa¬
miliar as she thought herself with its exterior.

Her notice was now attracted by a child’s voice, at
some distance. It appeared to call her name. Looking
in the direction whence it proceeded, Phoebe saw little
Ned Higgins, a good way down the street, stamping, shak¬
ing his head violently, making deprecatory gestures with
both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.

“No, no, Phoebe!” he screamed. “Don’t you go in!
There’s something wicked there! Don’t — don’t —
don’t go in!”

ALICE’S POSIES

337

»

m

K.

But, as the little personage could not be induced to ap¬
proach near enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded
that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the
shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good lady’s man¬
ifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring
children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly
laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how
unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had
become. As her next resort, Phoebe made her way into
the garden, where on so warm and bright a day as the
present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford, and per¬
haps Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the
shadow of the arbor. Immediately on her entering the gar¬
den-gate, the family of hens half ran, half flew, to meet
her; while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling under
the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily
over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was vacant,
and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp,
and bestrewn with twigs, and the disarray of the past
storm. The growth of the garden seemed to have got
quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage of
Pheebe’s absence, and the long-continued rain, to run
rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.
Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border, and made a
pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden.

The impressfon of the whole scene was that of a spot
where no human foot had left its print for many preced¬
ing days, — probably not since Phoebe’s departure, — for
she saw a side-comb of her own under the table of the ar¬
bor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when
she and Clifford sat there.

The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of

338 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up
in their old house, as they appeared now to have done.
Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of something
amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not give
shape, she approached the door that formed the cus¬
tomary communication between the house and garden.
It was secured within, like the two which she had already
tried. She knocked, however; and immediately, as if
the application had been expected, the door was drawn
open, by a considerable exertion of some unseen person’s
strength, not wide, but far enough to aiford her a side¬
long entrance. As Hepzibah, in order not to expose her¬
self to inspection from without, invariably opened a door
in this manner, Phcebe necessarily concluded that it was
her cousin who now admitted her.

Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the
threshold, and had no sooner entered than the door closed
behind her.

XX

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

Phosbe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight,
was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as
lurked in most of the passages of the old house. She was
not at first aware by whom she had been admitted. Be¬
fore her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a
hand grasped her own, with a firm but gentle and warm
pressure, thus imparting a welcome which caused her
heart to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of en¬
joyment. She felt herself drawn along, not towards the
parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which
had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven
Gables. The sunshine came freely into all the uncur¬
tained windows of this room, and fell upon the dusty floor;
so that Phcebe now clearly saw — what, indeed, had been
no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with hers
— that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave,
to whom she owed her reception. The subtile, intuitive
communication, or, rather, the vague and formless im¬
pression of something to be told, had made her yield un¬
resistingly to his impulse. Without taking away her
hand, she looked eagerly in his face, not quick to fore¬
bode evil, but unavoidably conscious that the state of
the family had changed since her departure, and therefore
anxious for an explanation.

339

340 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a
thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead, trac¬
ing a deep, vertical line between the eyebrows. His smile,
however, was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy,
by far the most vivid expression that Phoebe had ever
witnessed, shining out of the New England reserve with
which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his
heart. It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone
over some fearful object, in a dreary forest, or illimitable
desert, would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest
friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to
home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs. And
yet, as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of
inquiry, the smile disappeared.

“ I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe,”
said he. “ We meet at a strange moment 1”

“What has happened?” she exclaimed. “Why is the
house so deserted? Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?”

“Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!” answered
Holgrave. “We are alone in the house!”

“Hepzibah and Clifford gone?” cried Phoebe. “It is
not possible! And why have you brought me into this
room, instead of the parlor? Ah, something terrible has
happened! 1 must run and see!”

“No, no, Phoebe 1” said Holgrave, holding her back.
“ It is as 1 have told you. They are gone, and I know not
whither. A terrible event has, indeed, happened, but not
to them, nor, as 1 undoubtingly believe, through any
agency of theirs. If I read your character rightly,
Phoebe,” he continued, fixing his eyes on hers, with stem
anxiety, intermixed with tenderness, “gentle as you are,
and seen^ing to have your sphere among common things,

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

341

you yet possess remarkable strength. You have wonderful
poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove itself
capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the
ordinary rule.”

"Oh no, I am very weak!” replied Phoebe, trembling.
"But tell me what has happened!”

"You are strong!” persisted Holgrave. “You must
be both strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need
your counsel. It may be you can suggest the one right
thing to do f”

"Tell me! —tell me!” said Phoebe, all in a tremble.
"It oppresses, — it terrifies me, — this mystery! Any¬
thing else I can bear!”

The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had
just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-balanc¬
ing power with which Phoebe impressed him, it still seemed
almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to
her knowledge. It was like dragging a hideous shape of
death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a house¬
hold fire, where it would present all the uglier aspect,
amid the decorousness of everything about it. Yet, it
could not be concealed from her; she must needs know
it.

“Phoebe,” said he, "do you remember this?”

He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that
he h^ shown her at their first interview in the garden,
and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relent¬
less traits of the original.

"What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?”
asked Phoebe, with impatient surprise that Holgrave
should so trifle with her at such a moment. " It is Judge
Fyncheon I You have shown it to me before!”

342 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

" But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour,"
iaid the artist, presenting her with another miniature.
“ I had just finished it, when I heard you at the door.’*

’’This is death I” shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale
“Judge Pyncheon dead!’’

“Such as there represented,” said Holgrave, “he sits
in the next room. The Judge is dead, and Clifford and
Hepzibah have vanished I 1 know no more. All beyond
is conje<r‘ture. On returning to my solitary chamber, last
evening, I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hep-
zibah’s room, or Clifford’s; no stir nor footstep about the
house. This morning, there was the same death-like quiet.
From my window, I overheard the testimony of a neigh¬
bor, that your relatives were seen leaving the house, in
the midst of yesterday’s storm. A rumor reached me,
too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed. A feeling which
I cannot describe — an indefinite sense of some catastro¬
phe, or consummation — impelled me to make my way
into this part of the house, where I discovered what you
see. As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clif¬
ford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself, — for,
Phcebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me
strangely with that man’s fate, — I used the means at
my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge
Pyncheon’s death.”

Even in her agitation, Phoebe could not help remark¬
ing the calmjpss of Holgrave’s demeanor. He appeared, it
is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge’s death,
yet had received the fact into his mind without any mix¬
ture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening
inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that
it could almost have been prophesied.

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

34a

**Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called
in witnesses?** inquired she, with a painful shudder. "It
is terrible to be here alone !**

"But Clifford I** suggested the artist. "Clifford and
Hcpzibah 1 We must consider what is best to be done in
their behalf. It is a wretched fatality that they should
have disappeared! Their flight will throw the worst col¬
oring over this event of which it is susceptible. Yet how
easy is the explanation, to those who know them I Be¬
wildered and terror-stricken by the similarity of this
death to a former one, which was attended with such dis¬
astrous consequences to Clifford, they have had no idea
but of removing themselves from the scene. How mis¬
erably unfortunate I Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,
— had Clifford flung wide the door, and proclaimed Judge
Pynchedn*s death, — it would have been, however awful
in itself, an event fruitful of good consequences to them.
As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating
the black stain on Clifford*s character.’*

"And how,** asked Phcebe, "could any good come from
what is so very dreadful ? **

"Because,** said the artist, "if the matter can be fairly
considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident
that Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his
end. This mode of death has been an idiosyncrasy with
his family, for generations past; not often occurring, in¬
deed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking individ¬
uals about the Judge*s time of life, and generally in the
tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of
wrath. Old Maule*s prophecy was probably founded on a
knowledge of this physical predisposition in the Pyncheon
race. Now, there is a minute and almost exact similarity

344 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

in the appearances connected with the death that occurred
yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford’s
uncle thirty years ago. It is true, there was a certain ar¬
rangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted,
which made it possible — nay, as men look at these thing§|
probable, or even certain — that old Jaffrey Pyncheon
came to a violent death, and by Clifford’s hands.”

“Whence came those circumstances?” exclaimed
Phcebe; “he being innocent, as we know him to be I ”

“They were arranged,” said Holgrave, — “at least
such has long been my conviction, — they were arranged
after the uncle’s death, and before it was made public,
by the man who sits in yonder parlor. His own death, so
like that former one, yet attended by none of those sus¬
picious circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him,
at once a punishment for his wickedness, and making plain
the innocence of Clifford. But this flight, — it distorts
everything! He may be in concealment, near at hand.
Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the
Judge’s death the evil might be rectified.”

“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” said
Phcebe. “ It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.
Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest! Let
us throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to
see the truth !”^

“You are right, Phoebe,” rejoined Holgrave. “Doubt¬
less you are right.”

Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper
to Phoebe’s sweet and order-loving character, at thus
finding herself at issue with society, and brought in con¬
tact with an event that transcended ordinary rules. Nei-
tha was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

345

precincts of common life. On the contrary, he gathered
a wild enjoyment, — as it were, a flower of strange beauty,
growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,
’—such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered
from his present position. It separated Phoebe and him¬
self from the world, and bound them to each other, by
their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon’s mysteri¬
ous death, and the counsel which they were forced to hold
respecting it. The secret, so long as it should continue
such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in
the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an is¬
land in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow
betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered shores.
Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed
to draw them together; they were like two children who
go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another’s side,
through a shadow-haunted passage. The image of awful
Death, which filled the house, held them united by his
stiffened grasp.

These influences hastened the development of emotions
that might not otherwise have flowered so. Possibly,
indeed, it had been Holgrave’s purpose to let them die in
their undeveloped germs.

"Why do we delay so?’' asked Phoebe. "This secret
takes away my breath 1 Let us throw open the doors I ”

" In all our lives there can never come another moment
like this!” said Holgrave. "Phoebe, is it all terror? —
nothing but terror? Are you conscious of no joy, as I
am, that has made this the only point of life worth living
for?”

" It seems a sin,” replied Phoebe, trembling, " to think
of joy at such a time I”

346 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

"Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me, the
hour before you camel” exclaimed the artist. "A dark,
cold, miserable hour! The presence of yonder dead man
threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the
universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of
guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The
sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel
young again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hos¬
tile ; my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a
shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes!
But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope,
warmth, and joy came in with you I The black moment
became at once a blissful one. It must not pass without
the spoken word. I love you!”

"How can you love a simple girl like me?” asked
Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak. "You
have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in
vain to sympathize. And I, — I, too, — I have tenden¬
cies with which you would sympathize as little. That is
less matter. But I have not scope enough to make you
happy.”

"You are my only possibility of happiness I” answered
Holgrave. "I have no faith in it, except as you bestow
it upon mel”

" And then — I am afraid I” continued Phoebe, shrink¬
ing towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly
the doubts with which he affected her. "You will lead
me out of my own quiet path. You will make me strive
to follow you where it is pathless. I cannot do so. It is
not my nature. I shall sink down and perish!”

"Ah, Phoebe 1” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh,
and a smile that was burdened with thought. " It will be

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

347

Jar otherwise than as you forebode. The world owes all
its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man
inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. I have
a presentiment that^ hereafter, it will be my lot to set out
trees, to make fences, — perhaps, even, in due time, to
build a house for another generation, — in a word, to con¬
form myself to laws, and the peaceful practice of society.
Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating
tendency of mine.”

“I would not have it so I” said Phoebe, earnestly.

"Do you love me?” asked Holgrave. "If we love one
another, the moment has room for nothing more. Let
us pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love me,
Phoebe?”

"You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes,
drop. ‘ " You know I love you 1 ”

And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that
the one miracle was wrought, without which every human
existence is a blank. The bliss which makes all things
true, beautiful, and holy shone around this youth and
maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.
They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and
themselves the two first dwellers in it. The dead man,
so close beside them, was forgotten. At such a crisis,
there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and
embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.

But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down
again!

"Harkl” whispered Phcebe. "Somebody is at the
street-door!”

"Now let us meet the world!” said Holgrave. "No
doubt, the rumor of Judge Pyncheon’s visit to this house.

348 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

and the flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead
to the investigation of the premises. We have no way
but to meet it. Let us open the door at once.’’

But, to their surprise, before they could reach the
street-door, — even before they had quitted the room in
which the foregoing interview had passed, — they heard
footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore,
which they supposed to be securely locked, — which Hol-
grave, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phcebe had
vainly tried to enter, — must have been opened from
without. The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold,
decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers would nat¬
urally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling
where they knew themsehes unwelcome. It was feeble,
as of persons either weak or weary; there was the min¬
gled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the listeners.

“ Can it be ? ” whispered Holgrave.

"It is they!” answered Phcebe. "Thank God!—«
thank God!”

And then, as if in sympathy with Phcebe’s whispered
ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah’s voice, more distinctly.

"Thank God, my brother, we are at home I”

" Well! — Yes! — thank God! ” responded Clifford.
"A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well
to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor-door is open.
1 cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor,
where I used, — oh, very long ago, it seems to me alter
what has befallen us, — where I used to be so happy with
little Phcebe 1”

But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford
imagined it. They had not made many steps, — in truth,
they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an

THE FLOWER OF EDEN

349

accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next, — when
Phoebe ran to meet them. On beholding her, Hepzibah
burst into tears. With all her might, she had staggered
onward beneath the burden of grief and responsibility,
until now that it was safe to fling it down. Indeed, she
had not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold
it, and suffered it to press her to the earth. Clifford
appeared the stronger of the two.

“ It is our own little Phoebe! — Ah! and Holgrave with
her,” exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate
insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy. " I
thought of you both, as we came down the street, and be¬
held Alice’s Posies in full bloom. And so the flower of
Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house
to-day.”

XXI

THE DEPARTURE

The sudden death of so prominent a member of the so¬
cial world as the Honorable Judge Jaffrcy Pyncheon crei
ated a sensation (at least, in the circles more immediately
connected with the deceased) which had hardly quite
subsided in a fortnight.

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events
which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely
one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar import
tance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as
to his death. In most other cases and contingencies, the
individual is present among us, mixed up with the daily
revolution of affairs, and affording a definite point for ob¬
servation. At his decease, there is only a vaeancy, and
a momentary eddy, — very small, as compared with the
apparent magnitude of the ingurgitated objeet, — and a
bubble or two, ascending out of the black depth and burst¬
ing at the surface. As regarded Judge Pyncheon, it
seemed probable, at first blush, that the mode of his final
departure might give him a larger and longer postliumous
vogue than ordinarily attends the memory of a distin¬
guished man. Buf when it came to be understood, on
the highest professional authority, that the event was a
natural, and — except for some unimportant particulars,
denoting a slight idiosyncrasy — by no means an unusual
form of death, the public, with its customary alacrity,

350

THE DEPARTURE

351

proceeded to forget that he had ever lived. In short, the
honorable Judge was beginning to be a stale subject before
half the county newspapers had found time to put their
columns in mourning, and publish his exceedingly eulo¬
gistic obituary.

Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which
this excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was
a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would have
shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street-corners.
It is very singular, how the fact of a man’s death often
seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether
for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he
was living and acting among them. Death is so genuine
a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness;
It is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the
baser metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be,
return in a week after his decease, he would almost in¬
variably find himself at a higher or lower point than he
had formerly occupied, on the scale of public appreciation.
But the talk, or scandal, to which we now allude, had ref¬
erence to matters of no less old a date than the supposed
murder, thirty or forty years ago, of the late Judge Pyn-
clieon’s uncle. The medical opinion, with regard to his
own recent and regretted decease, had almost entirely
obviated the idea that a murder was committed in the
former case. Yet, as the record showed, there were cir¬
cumstances iirefragably indicating that some person had
gained access to old Jaffrey Pyncheon’s private apart¬
ments, at or near the moment of his death. His desk and
private drawers, in a room contiguous to his bedchamber,
had been ransacked; money and valuable articles were
missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the old man’s

352 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive
evidence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder
had been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his uncle in
the House of the Seven Gables.

Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory
that undertook so to account for these circumstances as
to exclude the idea of Clifford’s agency. Many persons
affirmed that the history and elucidation of the facts, long
so mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist
from one of those mesmerical seers, who, nowadays, so
strangely perplex the aspect of human affairs, and put
everybody’s natural vision to the blush, by the marvels
which they see with their eyes shut.

According to this version of the story. Judge Pyncheon,
exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative,
was, in his youth, an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace.
The brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had
been developed earlier than the intellectual qualities, and
the force of character, for which he was afterwards re¬
markable. He had shown himself wild, dissipated, ad¬
dicted to low pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his pro¬
pensities, and recklessly expensive, with no other resources
than the bounty of his uncle. This course of conduct had
alienated the old bachelor’s affection, once strongly fixed
upon him. Now it is averred, — but whetlier on author¬
ity available in a court of justice, we do not pretend to
have investigated, — that the young man was tempted by
the devil, one night* to search his uncle’s private drawers,
to which he had unsuspected means of access. While
thus criminally occupied, he was startled by the opening
of the chamber-door. There stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon,
in hb night clothes 1 The surprise of such a discovery,

THE DEPARTURE

353

his agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis of
a disorder to which the old bachelor had an hereditary
liability; he seemed to choke with blood, and fell upon
the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow against the
comer of a table. What was to be done? The old man
was surely dead! Assistance would come too late I
What a misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since
his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of
the ignominious offence which he had beheld his nephew in
the very act of committing!

But he never did revive. With the cool hardihood
that always pertained to him, the young man continued
«his search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent date,
in favor of Clifford, — which he destroyed, — and an
older one, in his own favor, which he suffered to remain.
But-before retiring, Jaffrey bethought himself of the evi¬
dence, in these ransacked drawers, that some one had
visited the chamber with sinister purposes. Suspicion,
unless averted, might fix upon the real offender. In the
very presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme
that should free himself at the expense of Clifford, his
rival, for whose character he had at once a contempt and
a repugnance. It is not probable, be it said, that he acted
with any set purpose of involving Clifford in a charge of
murder. Knowing that his uncle did not die by violence,
it may not have occurred to him, in the hurry of the crisis,
that such an inference might be drawn. But, when the
affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey’s previous steps had
already pledged him to those which remained. So craftily
had he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford’s
trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary to swear to any¬
thing false, but only to withhold the one decisive expla-

354 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

nation, by refraining to state what he had himself done
and witnessed.

Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon’s inward criminality, as regarded
Clifford, was, indeed, black and damnable; while its
mere outward show and positive commission was the small¬
est that could possibly consist with so great a sin. This
is just the sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectabil¬
ity finds it easiest to dispose of. It was suffered to fade out
of sight or be reckoned a venial matter, in the Honorable
Judge Puncheon’s long subsequent survey of his own life.
He shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven
frailties of his youth, and seldom thought of it again.

We leave the Judge tu his repose. He could not be
styled fortunate at the hour of death. Unknowingly, he
was a childless man, while striving to add more wealth to
his only child’s inheritance. Hardly a week after his de¬
cease, one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence
of the death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon’s son,
just at the point of embarkation for his native land.
By this misfortune Clifford became rich; so did Hepzi-
bah; so did our little village maiden, and, through her,
that sworn foe of wealth and all manner of conservatism,
— the wild reformer, — Holgrave I

It was now far too late in Clifford’s life for the good
opinion of society to be w'orth the trouble and anguish of
a formal vindication. W'hat he needed was the love of a
very few; not the admiration, or even the respect, of the
unknown many. Tlje latter might probably have been
won for him, had those on whom the guardianship of his
welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford
to a miserable resuscitation of past ideas, when the con¬
dition of whatever comfort he might eiqiect lay in the

THE DEPARTURE

355

calm of forgetfulness. After such wrong as he had suf¬
fered, there is no reparation. The pitiable mockery of it,
which the world might have been ready enough to offer,

, coming so long after the agony had done its utmost work,
^ would have been fit only to provoke bitterer laughter than
jpoor Clifford was ever capable of. It is a truth (and it
^would be a very sad one but for the higher hopes which it
suggests) that no great mistake, whether acted or endured,
in our mortal sphere, is ever really set right. Time, the
continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable
inopportunity of death, render it impossible. If, after
long lapse of years, the right seems to be in our power, we
find no niche to set it in. The better remedy is for the
sufferer to pass on, and leave what he once thought his
irreparable ruin far behind him.

The shock of Judge Pyncheon's death had a perma¬
nently invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on
Clifford. That strong and ponderous man had been Clif¬
ford’s nightmare. There was no free breath to be drawn,
within the sphere of so malevolent an influence. The
first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford's
aimless flight, was a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding
from it, he did not sink into his former intellectual apathy.
He never, it is true, attained to nearly the full measure of
what might have been his faculties. But he recovered
enough of them partially to light up his character, to dis¬
play some outline of the marvellous grace that was abor¬
tive in it, and to make him the object of no less deep, al¬
though less melancholy interest than heretofore. He was
evidently happy. Could we pause to give another picture
of his daily life, with all the appliances now at command
to gratify his instinct for the Beautiful, the garden scenes.

356 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

that seemed so sweet to him, would look mean and trivial
in comparison.

Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hep-
zibah, and little Phcebe, with the approval of the artist,
concluded to remove from the dismal old House of the
Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the present, at
the elegant country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon.
Chanticleer and his family had already been transported
thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun an inde¬
fatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as
a matter of duty and conscience, to continue their illus¬
trious breed under better auspices than for a century past.
On the day set for their departure, the principal person¬
ages of our story, including good Uncle Venner, were as¬
sembled in the parlor.

^*The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far
as the plan goes,” observed Holgrave, as the party were
discussing their future arrangements. “But I wonder
that the late Judge — being so opulent, and with a reason¬
able prospect of transmitting his wealth to descendants
of his own — should not have felt the propriety of em¬
bodying so excellent a piece of domestic architecture in
stone, rather than in wood. Then, every generation of
the family might have altered the interior, to suit its own
taste and convenience; while the exterior, through the
lapse of years, might have been adding venerableness to
its original beauty, and thus giving that impression of
permanence which I consider essential to the happiness of
any one moment.”

“Why,” cried Phoebe, gazing into the artist’s face with
infinite amazement, “how wonderfully your ideas are
changed! A house of stone, indeed! It is but two or

THE DEPARTURE

a57

three weeks ago that you seemed to wish people to live in
something as fragile and temporary as a bird's-nest!”

"Ah, Phoebe, I told you how it would be!” said the
artist, with a half-melancholy laugh. "You find me a
conservative already! Little did I think ever to become
one. It is especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so
much hereditary misfortune, and under tlie eye of yonder
portrait of a model conservative, who, in that very char¬
acter, rendered himself so long the evil destiny of his
race.”

"That picture!” said Clifford, seeming to shrink from
its stern glance. "Whenever I look at it, there is an old
dreamy recollection haunting me, but keeping just be¬
yond the grasp of my mind. Wealth it seems to say! —
boundless wealth! — unimaginable wealth! I could
fancy that, when I was a child, or a youth, that portrait
had spoken, and told me a rich secret, or had held forth
its hand, with the written record of hidden opulence.
But those old matters are so dim with me, nowadays!
What could this dream have been ? ”

“Perhaps I can recall it,” answered Holgrave. “Seel
There are a hundred chances to one tliat no person, un¬
acquainted with the secret, would ever touch this spring.”

“A secret spring!” cried Clifford. “Ah, I remember
now! I did discover it, one summer afternoon, when I
was idling and dreaming about the house, long long ago.
But the mystery escapes me.”

The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he
had referred. In former days, the effect would probably
have been to cause the picture to start forward. But, in
■so long a period of concealment, the machinery had been
eaten through with rust; so that at Holgrave's pressure,

358 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

the portrait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly from its
position, and lay face downward on the floor. A recess
in the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an ob¬
ject so covered with a century’s dust that it could not im¬
mediately be recognized as a folded sheet of parchment.
Holgrave opened it, and displayed an ancient deed, signed
with the hieroglyphics of several Indian sagamores, and
conveying to Colonel Pyncheon and his heirs, forever, a
vast extent of territory at the Eastward.

“This is the very parchment the attempt to recover
which cost the beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness
and life,” said the artist, alluding to his legend. “It is
what the Pyncheons sought in vain, while it was valuable;
and now that they find tiie treasure, it has long been
worthless.”

“Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him,”
exclaimed Hepzibah. “When they were young together,
Clifford probably made a kind of fairy-tale of this dis¬
covery. He was always dreaming hither and thither
about the house, and lighting up its dark corners with
beautiful stories. And poor Jaffrey, who took hold of
everything as if it were real, thought my brother had
found out his uncle^s wealth. He died with this delusion
in his mind! ”

“But,” said Phcebe, apart to Holgrave, “how came
you to know the secret?”

“My dearest Phcebe,” said Holgrave, “how will it
please you to assume the name of Maule? As for the
secret, it is the only inheritance that has come down to me
from my ancestors. You should have known sooner
(only that I was afraid of frightening you away) that, in
this long drama of wrong and retribution, I represent the

THE DEPARTURE

359

old wizard, and am probably as much a wizard as ever
he was. The son of the executed Matthew Maule,
while building this house, took the opportunity to
construct that recess, and hide away the Indian deed,
on which depended the immense land-claim of the Pyn>
cheons. Thus they bartered their Eastern territory for
Maule’s garden-ground.’"

“And now,” said Uncle Venner, “I suppose their whole
claim is not worth one man’s share in my farm yonder!”

“Uncle Venner,” cried Phoebe, taking the patched
philosopher’s hand, “you must never talk any more about
your farm I You shall never go there, as long as you live!
There is a cottage in our new garden, — the prettiest
little yellowish-brown cottage you ever saw; and the
sweetest-looking place, for it looks just as if it were made
of ^ngerbread, — and we are going to fit it up and
furnish it, on purpose for you. And you shall do nothing
but what you choose, and shall be as happy as the day is
long, and shall keep Cousin Clifford in spirits with the
wisdom and pleasantness which is always dropping from
your lips I”

“ Ah I my dear child,” quoth good Uncle Venner, quite
overcome, “ if you were to speak to a young man as you do
to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart another min¬
ute would not be worth one of the buttons on my waist¬
coat! And — soul alive! — that great sigh, which you
made me heave, has burst off the very last of them!
But, never mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did
heave; and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of
heavenly breath, to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phoebe I
They’ll miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round
by the back doors; and Pyncheon Street, I’m afraid, will

360 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

hardly look the same without old Unde Venner, who re¬
members it with a mowing field on one side, and the gar¬
den of the Seven Gables on the other. But either I must
go to your country-seat, or you must come to my farm,—
that’s one of two things certain; and I leave you to
choose which!”

“Oh, come with us, by all means. Uncle Vennerl” said
Clifford, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old
man’s mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. “I want you
always to be within five minutes’ saunter of my chair.
You are the only philosopher I ever knew of whose wis¬
dom has not a drop of bitter essence at the bottom I ”

“Dear me!” cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to
realize what manner of man he was. “And yet folks used
to set me down among the simple ones, in my younger
days! But 1 suppose 1 am like a Roxbury russet, — a
great deal the better, the longer I can be kept. Yes; and
my words of wisdom, that you and Phcebe tell me of, are
like the golden dandelions, which never grow in the hot
months, but may be seen glistening among the withered
grass, and under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as De¬
cember. And you are welcome, friends, to my mess of
dandelions, if there were twice as many!”

A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now
drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion-
house. The party came forth, and (with the exception
of good Uncle Venner, who was to follow in a few days)
proceeded to take their places. They were chatting and
laughing very pleasantly together; and — as proves to be
often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate
with sensibility — Clifford and Hepzibah bade a final
farewell to the abode of their forefathers, with hardly

THE DEPARTURE

361

more emotion than if they had made it their arrangement
to return thither at tea-time. Several children were
drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the ba¬
rouche and pair of gray horses. Recognizing little Ned
Higgins among them, Hepzibah put her hand into her
pocket, and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunch¬
est customer, with silver enough to people the Dom-
danel cavern of his interior with as various a procession
of quadrupeds as passed into the ark.

Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove
off.

"Well, Dixey,” said one of them, “what do you think
of this? My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and
lost five dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Pyncheon has
been in trade just about as long, and rides off in her car¬
riage with a couple' of hundred thousand, — reckoning
her share, and Clifford’s, and Phoebe’s, — and some say
twice as much! If you choose to call it luck, it is all very
well; but if we are to take it as the will of Providence*
why, I can’t exactly fathom it! ”

“Pretty good business!” quoth the sagacious Dixey,
— “pretty good business!”

Maule’s well, all this time, though left in solitude, was
throwing up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures, in
which a gifted eye might have seen foreshadowed the
coming fortunes of Hepzibah and Clifford, and the de¬
scendant of the legendary wizard, and the village maiden,
over whom he had thrown Love’s web of sorcery. The
Pyncheon Elm, moreover, with what foliage the Septem¬
ber gale had spared to it, whispered unintelligible proph¬
ecies. And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from
the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and

362 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

fancied that sweet Alice Fyncheon — after witnessing
these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness,
of her kindred mortals — had given one farewell touch of
a spirit’s joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heaven¬
ward from the House of the Seven Gables 1

Hawthorne at Thirty-five, by Henry Inman.
Now In Essex Institute at Salem, Massachusetts.

NOTES

CHAPTER I

In the fiiefc paragraph Ha\vthorne clearly sets forth the scene
in which the story is to move: " The rusty wooden house with
seven acutely peaked gables, in I*yncheon Street, in a New Eng¬
land town.” With the exception of Chapter XVII, ” The Fli^t
of Two Owls,” the entire action occurs in the house and
garden.

The story runs swiftly, from June, with its roses in bloom,
when Phoebe arrived, to the September gale which scattered the
foliage of the Pyncheon elm, just before ” The plain but hand¬
some dark-green barouche drove away with the happy party
chatting and laughing very pleasantly together.”

The time is 1850, when the telephone and automobile were
unthought of, and even the railway train was an unusual sight.

Nearly all the events referred to in Chapter I precede by many
years the story. Note how skilfully Hawthorne uses ” old ma¬
terial,” the forgotten events and personages, the traditions and
superstitions, ” to unite the past with the time of the story,
and to point the moral, that the act of a passing generation is
the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far
distant time.” (See Paragraph 2.)

Questions

Why did Colonel Pyncheon and Maule quarrel?

What was the fate of Maule ?

What connection had Colonel Pyncheon with it?

What curse did Maule pronounce and why?

Do you find in this chapter a suggestion of a character who
will presently appear as a figure in the story?

363

364

NOTES

What is your opinion of the obligation resting upon the Fyn-
cheon family to right the wrong done to the Maules by their an¬
cestor?

Notes

Paob 2. folio; a book composed of sheets of paper folded
once, hence of large size, duodecimo: a book-page of about
4} by 7} inches, often written 12 mo.

4. epoch: period of history. In this connection look up
the story of witchcraft in New England.

14. erudite: very learned.

18. Explain, “ Now the seven Gables will be new shingled.’*

Topics for Study

Description of the house.

Comparative social standing of the Maule and Pyncheon
families.

Public opinion of the location of the new house.

Failure of host to welcome his guests at dedication of house

Mysterious power of the Maules.

Account for the feeling of family importance on the part of
the Pyncheons.

Oral reading: Last five paragraphs of chapter.

CHAPTER II
Questions

What momentous change in the fortunes of the Pyncheon
family is at hand at the opening of Chapter II?

How does Hawthorne’s delay in opening the story or coming
to the crucial point of the chapter show 83 rmpathy?

Describe the various wa 3 rs by which Hepzibah delayed open¬
ing the shop door.

Notes

Page 81. lugubrious: exaggeratedly solemn, inaudible: un«
able to be heard.

82. matutinal: pertaining to the morning.

NOTES

365

33. escritoire: a secretary, a combined writing desk and
book-case. Malbone: Edward G., an American portrait painter
of the latter half of the 18th century, reverie: listless
thought — a day-dream.

34. centipede: a many-legged insect; the “hundred legged
table “ or “ gate table " as it was called, is here referred to. One
is still shown in the House of the Seven Gables at Salem, Mass.

37. Gibraltar: a kind of sugar-candy made in short, thick
sticks with rounded ends.

38. Jim Crow: a dramatic song and negro dance brought
out by Thomas D. Rice, the first “ Negro Minstrel,” in Wash¬
ington in 1835. Joseph Jefferson appeared with him in this
dance when only four years old. lucifer-matches: the familiar
“ match ” of to-day, ignitible by friction, was a recent invention
at this period, having replaced the “ flint and steel ” for pro¬
ducing a means of fire.

39. galvanic: a chemical current produced by chemical ac¬
tion. .£olus: the god of the winds.

40. 'throe: a violent pain, agony, patrician: pertaining to
the aristocracy of Rome, plebeian: pertaining to the common
people of Rome.

41. pedigrees: a line of ancestors, hucksteress: a woman
who retails small wares.

42. hermitage: the retreat or cell of a hermit.

43. conch-shell: a mollusk shell which can be blown as a
horn.

44. immitigable: that cannot be mitigated or relieved.

Topics for Study

The miniature.

Description of Hepzibah's room.

Portrait of Colonel Pyncheon.

Hepzibah’s scowl.

The shop.

Hepzibah’s first customer, and what he did for her.
Sounds of the morning: Hepzibah’s personal appearance.
“ Dfe is made up of marble and mud.”

366

NOTES

CHAPTERS in-V

QuestionB

What about the first visitor gave a cheery impression?

What in his personal appearance seems to you distinctly old*
fashioned?

Explain Miss Hepzibah’s horror of going to work.

Summarize Holgrave’s idea of “ a lady.”—Which approaches
more nearly to present day ideas, Holgrave’s or Miss Hepzibah’s?

What was there really noble in her refusal to take money for
“ bread,” from Holgrave?

What in the overheard conversation discouraged Miss Hepzi-
bah?

What finally compelled Miss Hepzibah to take money for her
wares?

What did she gain from her first customer?

Give three reasons why th^; different customers of the first
day received an unpleasant impression.

Notes

Page 46. Pale as a ghost at cock-crow: it was an old belief
that ghosts could not breathe the air of day, but at dawn or cock¬
crow must return to the abode of spirits. See the play of Ham¬
let ; ” But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air.”

46. Oak Hall: a clothing store in old Dock Square, Boston,
at the time of the writing of this story.

65. contumaciously: obstinately. In what respect is the little
customer a “cannibal”? pertinacious: continuing steadily:
persevering.

67. “ the little circlet of the copper coin ”: Explain. What
is the rhetorical figure?

60. virulence: bitter hatred.

68. “ Midas-like, transmuting them to geld ”: a reference to
the old fable of Midas, a King of Phrygia, who was granted the
power of turning everything he touched into gold.

81. boudoir: a lady's private sitting room, harpsichord:
an early musical instrument from which the piano has been
developed.

NOTES

367

Topics for ^tudly

Why did the sight of a lady, “in a delicate and costly summer
garb,” etc., especially arouse Miss Hepzibah’s anger, and
“ deepen the scowl " 7

Notice how Hawthorne makes us see the resemblance between
the portrait of the original Pyncheon, the Puritan, and “ Cousin
Jeffrey Pyncheon/' From Hepzibah's thoughts as she leaned
forward to gaze at him as he looked at the shop window, what
do you consider to be the relation between them?

“ Uncle Venner " brings a more cheerful note into the chapter.
To what do you attribute it? Explain the allusion to his “ farm.”

Was Uncle Venner’s advice on shopkeeping good?

Note Hawthorne’s method of carrying forward the reader’s
interest by timing the arrival of the stage-coach with the unex¬
pected visitor at the close of the chapter.

Who was Phoebe and why had she come to the House of the
Seven Gables?

TelHihe story of " Alice’s Roses.’’

Describe the change which Phoebe contrived to make in her
room in a few moments.

How did Phoebe overcome Miss Hepzibah’s objections to her
remaining with her?

The coming of Clifford.

Contrast Phoebe and the old house.

The daguerreotypist.

How much of the plot is now developed?

CHAPTERS VI AND VII
Questions

What two things in the garden seemed to Phoebe like her coun¬
try home?

Note Hawthorne’s humor in linking the aristocratic hens with
the decayed fortunes of the Pyncheon family.

In the discussion of the daguerreotype, as a portrait, to what
did Phoebe object?

368

NOTES

Notes

Page 96. vagrant: wandering.

99. authenticity: well established truth.

106. cogitations: thoughts.

109. olfactory: pertaining to the sense of smell, tidbit: a
morsel, as of choice food.

110. Mocha: a choice coffee brought from Mocha in Arabia.

Topics for Study

Observe the second description of the portrait “ whose original
if he is s*ill in the world, might defy the sun to make him look
hard and stern.”

The reader is being prepared for a kindly feeling toward Clif¬
ford, who will presently appear in the story.

Describe the breakfast, noting the appeal to the eye as well as
to the senses of smell and taste.

“ But the Puritan’s face scowled down out of the picture.”
Hawthorne continually reminds us of the ” malign influence,”
the evil which the original of the portrait has wrought.

Oral reading: The Pyncheon hens. Chapter VI. The break¬
fast table, Chapter VII.

CHAPTER VIII
Questions

Why has Judge Pyncheon come to the shop?

Which of the two distinct impressions of the Judge which
Pheebe receives, is the real man, his true character?

Does Phoebe’s fancy when she realizes that the Judge is the
original of the daguerreotype she has seen, seem correct to you?

^at place do you give the Judge among the characters of
the story, as you notice the bitterly sarcastic tone in whicu Haw¬
thorne always describee him ?

Es^lain Clifford’s horror of the Judge.

Notes

Page 186. discrepani^: disagreement.

137. fealty: fidelity to a superior power.

NOTES

369

138. anathenu: a curse pronounced by ecclesiastical au¬
thority.

142. acerbity: sourness of taste, harshness of manners, in¬
tuitions.

Topics for Study

Note how little Ned Higgins’s inquir 3 ' for " Old Maid Pyn-
cheon’s brother,” and his remark, “ Folks say he has got home,”
reveal to Phcebe the relationship of Hepzibah’s guest and arouse
her wonder as to ” where can he have been? ”

Clifford in prison.

Light and cheer for the House of the Seven Gables.

Neighborly curiosity.

The curse.

CHAPTER IX
Questions

Select six examples of figures from the chapter.

What do they add to the story?

Did the old house and its sombre inmates affect Phoebe at all?

Notes

Page 149. Rasselas: the one romance by Dr. Samuel John¬
son, of the 18th century, dry-rot: decay in wood caused by
partial exclusion of the air.

162. ottar of rose: an oriental perfume extracted from roses;
very choice and expensive.

Topics for Study

In Hepzibah's efforts to amuse her brother notice Hawthorne's
union of humor and pathos, viz.: The books she selects to read
aloud, already in the background of attention, out-of-date!
Her voice with its ” life-long croak ” of ” settled melancholy,”
" like a black silken thread on which the crystal beads of speech
are strung and whence they take their hue.” Her momentary
discussion whether to ” thrum on the harpsichord accompanying
the performance with her voice.” Her wish to improve her

370

NOTES

peTBonal appearance, evidently distasteful to Clifford: “she
thought of putting ribbons on her turban but, by the instant rush
of several guardian angels, was withheld.”

Observe Hawthorne's use of contrast as this gloomy though
facetious picture is lightened by the sunshine of Phoebe’s pres>
ence. “ As every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for
the rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah
and Clifford, sombre as they might seem, acquire a subtle
attribute of happiness from Phoebe’s intermixture with
them.”

Oral reading: Phoebe’s gift of song, pages 153-155.

CHAPTER X
Questions

Account for the effect upon Clifford: of Phoebe’s reading,
of the bees in the garden, of the humming-birds.

Why are the Pyncheon hens introduced?

Explain Clifford’s liking for Uncle Venner.

Why did Hepzibah interrupt the conversation by saying
“ Come, Phoebe, it is time to bring the currants ”?

'What part does the daguerreot 3 rpiBt take in the chapter?

Does Holgrave seem to you a real person, true to life?

Notes

Page 163. lambent: flickering, gleaming on the surface

164. torpor: loss of the power of motion.

166. Hymettus: a mountain in Greece celebrated for its
flowers, honey, and marble.

Topics for Study

Compare the presentation of Judge P 3 mcheon’s character
with that of Uncle Venner; which would you pronounce likable?

Oral reading: Sunday afternoon in the garden, pages 177-180>
Tlie hens, pages 177-190.

NOTES

3731

CHAPTER XI AND XII
Questions

Account for Clifford’s interest in the ordinary, ereryday
happenings of the street.

Why was the scissors-grinder’s wheel more pleasing to him
than were the watering-cart and the railway train?

Explain the effect of the political procession upon Clifford.

Explain Holgrave’s biography.

His attitude towards the P 3 mcheon family; toward Phoebe.

Explain: " ' I believe I am a little mad,’ said the artist.”

Notes

Page 103. bugbear: an imaginaiy object of fear.

196. Artesian wells: the familiar “ driven ” well of to-day
for obtaining water by boring through different layers of soil;
so called from Artois in France where the method was discovered.

197. ^ Gil Bias: a Spanish romance of the 18th century, trans¬
lated by Tobias Smollett.

200. plummet-line: a line perpendicular to the plane of the
horizon.

Topics for Study

The arched window. Note the artistic effect of the back¬
ground against which the forms of Clifford and Phoebe are out¬
lined.

Hepzibah’s ” one affection.”

Hepzibah’s “ bitter sense of wrong.”

Oral reading: The groups at the window, pages 195-197.

CHAPTER Xm
Questions

Hawthorne, in the story of Alice Pyncheon which Holgrave
reads to Phoebe, makes more clear to the reader the appearance
of the house study, the traditions connected with it, and pre¬
pares us for the revelation of the next chapter as to Holgrave’s
connection with the Maules, and his mesmeric power.

372

NOTES

Why did Holgrave wish to read the story to I^csbe?

How do you explain the m 3 rsterious behavior of the portrait?

Notes

Page 214. exotics: introduced from a foreign country, not
native.

217. sea-coal: highly bituminous coal, used in gas-maJdng,
found in England and United States.

221. bandy: a hooked club for striking a ball back and forth
in the game “ bandy ”; hence to bandy words.

222. ccUoquists: those engaged in conversation.

Topics for Study

The story of Alice Pyncheon.

Hawthorne’s belief in mesmerism.

The most exciting moment of the story.

Oral reading: Scipio and the caii)enter. Alice Pyncheon and
young Matthew Maule.

CHAPTER XIV
Questions

Account for the impression made upon Phcsbe by Holgrave’s
strange story.

Why did Phoebe decide to go home for a time?

Show by her different leave-takings, the change in her charac¬
ter since coming to the House of the Seven Gables.

Do you think she may soon return?

Notes

Page 238. speculative: contemplative, theoretical manu^
script: a book or p%per written by hand.

239. zenith: the point in the heavens directly overhead.

240. renovation: renewal.

243. necromantic: pertaining to, or done by a conjurer.

248. beaver: a high hat made from the fur of the braver,
formerly much in use.

NOTES

373

Tidies for Study

Mesmerism, does Hawthorne believe in it?

Holgrave as a magazine writer.

Oral reading: Phoebe’s good-by, pages 245-249.

CHAPTER XV
Questions

What was the effect, upon the family, of Phoebe’s absence?
What favorite method of Hawthorne is shown when the harsh
sound of the shop-bell interrupts the mysterious notes of the
harpsichord?

Does Hepzibah show courage in meeting Judge Pyncheon?

Notes

Page 269. diurnal: occurring every twentv-four hours.

262. patrimonial: inherited from a father.

266. asylum: an institution for the care of the sick or insane.
268. relenting: becoming less hard, yielding.

Topics for Study

The storm as a background.

The Judge’s call upon Clifford.

CHAPTER XVI
Questions

Though there is no break in the action, the beginning of a
new chapter serves to heighten the suspense which increases
as Hepzibah slowly ascends the stairs, knocks at one door and
another, vainly calling, “ Clifford.”

Why is the cause of the Judge’s death left unexplained?

What apparent change in the character of Clifford and of
Hepzibah?

'^y do they flee?

374

NOTES

Notes

Page 270. unprecedented: not preceded by a like case.

278. philanthropist: one who shows a kind, benevolent spirit.
A lover of mankind.

279. pretematurally: with more than natural power, out of
the natural course of things.

Topics for Study

Hawthorne’s imagery.

The fate of Judge Pyncheon.

The danger which threatens Clifford.

** The weight is gone.”

Oral reading: Hepzibah finds Clifford, pages 279-280.

CHAPTER XVII
Questions

What is the appropriateness of the title, ** The Flight of
Two Owls ”?

Which suffers more, Clifford or Hepzibah?

Account for the change in Clifford.

What does his remark, “ A dream, Hepzibah! On the contrary,
I have never been awake before,” prove as to his excited state
of mind?

What in the conversation with the old gentleman in the train
would cause alarm?

Why was all the ** interior life of the train ” so interesting
to our travellers?

Explain the mood of each when they had left the train.

Notes

Page 286. quidnuncs: busybodies, gossips.

289. poignant: acutely painful.

290. unmalleable: not pliable, incapable of being wrought
into shape by a hammer.

292. summer solstice: the time, about June 21, when the
days begin to shorten.

NOTES

375

Topics for Study

Clifford’s fancies.

Opinions of Clifford’s fellow passengers.

Hepsibah’s haunting thoughts.

Important inventions referred to.

Oral reading: Clifford and the old gentleman on the traiOi
pages 291-297.

CHAPTER XVni
Questions

Elxplain the effect of all the occupations of the busy day whioh
Hawthorne pictures as awaiting the silent figure in the old chair,
the plans for further money-making: for his own comfort: the
benevolences even, and the final honor of the governorship ar¬
rayed against the tragic death of the Judge.

The imaginary procession of the various P3rncheonB and their
dissatisfaction with the portrait and its frame suggest the dis¬
covery soon to be made. Note the relief to the tension of the
chapter when at the end the little shop-bell rings.

Notes

Page 304. chronometer: a timepiece of great accuracy.

309. sensual: devoted to the pleasures of sense and appetite.

314. grandomes: women of rank or importance.

316. obstreperous: loud, clamorous.

Topics for Study

The quivering moon-beams.

The cat, why introduced.

The picture frame.

The morning sunshine and the ringing of the shop-beU.

Oral reading: The Judge in the arm-chair, pages 302-310L

376

NOTES

CHAPTER XIX
Questions

Another of Hawthorne's much used contrasts is seen in the
series of everyday happenings at the door of the House of the
Seven Gables, while the silent figure of the Judge waits within.

Explain the symbolism of the single branch of the Pyncheon
elm ** transmuted to bright gold."

Trace the rise and growth of the rumor of the Judge's death.

Again the allusion to Maule's well appears. Why?

'fhe beauty of Alice’s posies in the angle of the two front ga¬
bles is a part of “ the inviting aspect that has come over the
venerable edifice."

What oft occurring characteristic of Hawthorne’s style is here
illustrated?

Notes

Page 821. iSneas : the hero of Virgil’s Mneid.

826. inscrutable: incapable of being understood by human
reason.

880. automatic: self-acting, acting involuntarily, obse¬
quiously : meanly condescending, servilely.

Topics for Study

Unde Venner's call.

Dixey’s explanation.

The Italian boy and his hurdy-gurdy.

The return of Phoebe.

CHAPTER XX
Questions

What reasons influenced Holgrave to “ make a pictorial record
of Judge P 3 mcheon’s death "?

What change has come over Holgrave and what has wrought
it?

Note, too, the change in Clifford as he exclaims, “The flower
of Eden has bloomed in this old, darksome house io-day." Ex¬
plain.

NOTES

&77

Notes

Page 340. ilUmitaUe: without limits, immeasurable.

841. decorottsness: propriety, fitness.

8tt. catastrophe: a final event, usually of unhappy character.
348. obliterating: blotting out, removing all trace of.

Topics for Study

The meeting between Holgrave and Phcebe.

Judge pyncheon’a part in the misfortunes of Clifford.

The return of Clifford and Hepzibah.

CHAPTER XXI
Questions

Explain how Hawthorne gathers up all the plot threads and
disposes of the characters happily: unexpected wealth to Clif-
iordi Hepzibah, and Phoebe, with, of course, Holgrave.

The clearing away of the mystery of the portrait and the lost
deed.

The new and cheerful home, the elegant country-scat of the
late Judge Pyncheon.

The transferring thither of the Pyncheon hens, who were im¬
mediately inspired to “ continue their illustrious breed under
better auspices than for a century past.”

The handsome provision for Uncle Venner surpassing his
“farm.”

The parting gift to little Ned Higgins.

No wonder the Pyncheon elm whispered prophecies, and the
spirit of Alice Pyncheon, as wise Uncle Venner fancied, “gavo
one farewell touch of a spirit’s joy upon her harpsichord, as sht
floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables.”

Notes

Page 361. irrefmgably: unanswerably.

362. elucidation: making clear, explanation.

864. resuscitation: recovery from apparent death.

378

NOTES

Topics for Study

Holgrave’s identity.

The hidden deed.

Oral reading: The departure from the House of the Seven
Gables, pages 359 to end.

THEME SUBJECTS

1. Sketch of Hawthorne’s Life.

2. Description of the Old Manse.

3. Description of the House of the Seven Gables.

4. Special Features of a Colonial House.

5. The Garden.

6. The Pyncheon Hens.

7. Daguerreotypes.

8. Maule’s Well.

9. The Arched Windov.

10. The Shop.

11. Clifford’s First Breakfast.

Character Sketches of

12. Clifford Pyncheon.

13. Phoebe.

14. Ned Higgins.

15. Hepzibah.

16. Holgrave.

17. Uncle Venner.

18. Judge Pyncheon.

19. Alice Pyncheon.

20. Alice’s Posies.

21. Blowing Soap Bubbles.

Dramatic Incidents

22. First Day in the Shop.

23. Phoebe and the Kiss.

24. Holgrave and His Experiment in Mesmerism.

25. The Runaways.

26. Judge Pyncheon in the Oaken Chair.

27. Uncle Vernier’s Mazims for Shopkeeping.